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THE FROG WAS PUTTING ON A PAIR OF RUBBER BOOTS. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


BY 

WALTER BURGES SMITH 



ILLUSTRATED BY C. HOWARD 


LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 
BOSTON 


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OCT 17 3904 
OoB.vrffc’ht ©rtrv 
Uxsl. n ./<zfat{ 
j CLASS a XXo. No. 

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Copyright, 1903, 

BY 

WALTER BURGES SMITH. 
Copyright, 1904, 

BY 

WALTER BURGES SMITH. 


Published in October 




4 


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ENTERED AT STATIONER’S HALL 


s 


To Harriet , and George , and Charlie , 
little William W alter i 


Dear little children, clustered at my knee. 

Begging for stories with sweet childish tongue; 
“Please, Uncle, tell about when you were young” — 
If such an age I ever chanced to be — 

Had I your eyes, what wonders would I see ; 

Your ears, I’d snatch at songs in fancy sung 
And trace your little wayward steps among 
Adventures strange, that once seemed real to me, 
That once seemed real — ah me! the priceless gift 
Of childhood’s happy days ne’er comes again. 

In reason’s circling cloud there is no rift, 

Who seeks the glimpse beyond must strive in vain 
Yet Uncle strives, as from this book appears — 
Because — it is because he loves you, dears. 




CONTENTS 


/ '' A 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Frog in the Well 9 

II. On the Royal Road to Learning . 25 

III. The Land of Letters 37 

IV. Queen Anne 51 

V. A Little Game of Cards .... 64 

VI. The Double-you Twins 79 

VII. The Subtraction Railroad ... 96 

VIII. All about Animals no 

IX. The House that Jack Built . . 124 

X. Concerning Giants 144 

XI. The Historical Knight 161 

XII. Harriet Finds Alice 177 






ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

THE FROG WAS PUTTING ON A PAIR OF RUBBER BOOTS. 

Frontispiece 


ON THE ROAD TO LEARNING 17 

A GARDENER AND A GARDENESS 40 

<‘I WISH YOU WOULDN’T CROWD SO” ....... 61 

THE CARD PARTY 67 

THE DAIRY MAN AND THE DAIRY MOON 90 

“ DO YOU WANT TO BUY A TICKET?” . 97 

QUITE A LITTLE COMPANY OF ANIMALS 118 

OUT OF THE GATE AND OUT AND AWAY 143 

HARRIET AND THE DORKLING AND SIMPLE SIMON . 153 
GOOD SIR HUGO AND FATHER ISAACS 169 


THE KNOCKER TURNED INTO A BUTTERED ROLL . .178 




























































































































































































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. 













LOOKING FOR ALICE 


CHAPTER I 

THE FROG IN THE WELL 

Of course, Harriet knew all about the Adven- 
tures of Alice in Wonderland, as what little girl 
does not ? She knew, 
of course, that the 
Adventures were only 
a part of a story and 
did not really and 
truly happen. But 
she had been told 
that Alice herself 
was a real, live little 
girl, and Harriet 
often thought how 
nice it would be if only Alice could come and 
play with her. 



9 


IO 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


She used to fancy what they would say and do to- 
gether, and how Alice would relate the sayings and 
doings of the White Rabbit and the Duchess and 
the Queen of Hearts. There really was a Queen of 
Hearts, for Harriet had seen her once, and the King 
and the Knave, too, in a pack of cards, when she had 
played “ Old Maid ” ; and she had decided, for her- 
self, that the Duchess must have been the “ Old 
Maid.” 

“ And that was why she had to look out for the 
pig-baby,” Harriet thought, for it seemed to her that 
looking out for other people’s babies was the special 
mission of old maids. 

It was not so pleasant to fancy such things for 
herself as to hear them read about. But, often- 
times, when Harriet was ready to listen, there was 
no one to read to her; and when she opened the 
little green and gold book to look at the pictures, 
which were just exactly what Harriet knew Alice 
and her friends were like, she found that the letters 
of the alphabet were quite as much mixed up as 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 1 

they \Vere when she tried to repeat them at lesson 
time and not a bit more interesting. 

If only she could find the hole that the White 
Rabbit hurried into on that eventful afternoon, Har- 
riet felt quite sure that she would be able to find 
Alice also, and then, hand in hand, they would wan- 
der about “ the beautiful gardens, among the bright 
flower-beds and the cool fountains.” 

But, alas ! the old well in the orchard behind the 
house was the only hole that Harriet could find, and 
that did not look like a rabbit hole at all, for it had 
a high, wooden curb around it and a great well-sweep 
above it, with a stone at the end to balance the 
bucket of clear, cool water when it came up, shining 
and dripping, from the depths below. 

But then, who can tell just what there is at 
the bottom of a well after all? And so, one day, 
Harriet was lifted up and allowed to take a long 
look down into the shadows below. ' 

“ You see it is nothing but a well, Miss,” said 
Margaret. 


12 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“ Oh, but, Margaret, I can see a little girl down 
there at the bottom and she is looking up at me,” 
Harriet exclaimed, in great excitement. 

“ That is only 
your reflection,” 
said Margaret. 
“ Now run away 
and play, like a 
good girl.” 

So Harriet ran 
away and played, 
like a good girl, 
but, for all that, 
she was quite sure 
that Margaret was 
mistaken, and that 
the little girl whom she had seen at the bottom 
of the well was really Alice herself ; for had she 
not bow'ed when Harriet had bowed, and smiled 
when she smiled ? 

Oh, what fun they would have together, if only 



LOOKING FOR ALICE 


13 


the little girl in the well could get into the bucket 
sometime and come up and play with her in the 
shade of the apple trees in the old orchard ! Oh, if 
only the little girl could come ! 

Now, one day, when Harriet had been playing by 
herself in the orchard for a long, long time, she lay 
down to rest for a minute. The green leaves 
rustled softly overhead and the sunbeams danced 
like tiny sparks of fire, here and there, and the little 
white clouds in the blue sky looked down at her 
between the branches, and, as Harriet lay there, she 
closed her eyes, “ to take a little look inside,” and, of 
course, her thoughts turned once more to the little 
girl in the well and she wondered if Alice was still 
there, looking up and waiting for her. 

The old, gray bucket lay upon the ground beside 
the well-curb, and Harriet wondered if it would 
make a comfortable seat, for she had been in an 
elevator once and so knew exactly what would be 
most comfortable ; and she kept thinking of this, 
until presently she got up and seated herself very 


14 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 



carefully in the bucket. “ Just to see what it would 
feel like,” as she said afterwards. 

The bucket proved to be very comfortable indeed ; 
and if it had been in its usual place on the edge of 

the well-curb, Har- 
riet could have 
looked down into 
the well again. 
“ But then, if it had 
been there I could 
not have got into 
it,” she reflected, 
when, to her sur- 
prise, the bucket be- 
gan to rise 
from the ground 
so gently that 
she was not at 
all alarmed, 
even when, having lifted her over the well-curb, it 
began to descend very steadily into the well. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


!5 


She had just time to catch a glimpse of the little 
girl at the bottom looking up at her, and then, as the 
bucket^ dipped lower and lower, it became so dark 
that she could not see anything, because her eyes 
were not accustomed to the shadows. 

“If it is dark like this, I don’t think I shall get out 
at all,” she said to herself. “ And I’m sure if I was 
Alice, I should have come up long ago. But I sup- 
pose the bucket is full of water when it comes up, 
and so it wouldn’t be so pleasant to ride in.” 

You see, she was a very brave little girl, so she 
was not at all afraid, but held on tightly with both 
hands until the bucket stopped when it reached the 
bottom, and Harriet stepped sdfely out. 

She was standing on the bank of a little pool, and 
the sun was shining brightly, and all about the fields 
lay, broad and inviting, like those at home. But 
there was no little girl to be seen, much to Harriet’s 
disappointment, although a big, green frog was sitting 
by the side of the pool, who blinked at her out of his 
great, dull eyes. 


i6 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


‘*Well?” the Frog croaked, in his hoarse voice. 
His voice was so hoarse and queer that Harriet 
stepped back — you see, his voice wasn’t nearly so 
queer as the fact that he had one at all — but as soon 
as she touched the rim of the bucket it floated out on 
the water, and then shot up out of sight very rapidly. 
There was no one else beside the Frog who could 
have spoken, and he looked as though he was fast 
asleep, with his great, round eyes wide open. 

“Well?” the Frog asked once more, in his hoarse 
croak. “ Poor thing, he must have caught cold sitting 
in the wet all the time,” Harriet thought. 

“ How do you do, sir? ” she said aloud. 

“ Well,” said the Frog, for the third time. 

“ That is nice,” said Harriet, politely. “ Will you 
please tell me where I am ? ” 

“Well,” said the Frog, for the fourth time, and 
without another word, he leaped into the pool with a 
great splash. 

“I suppose that ‘Well’ is all he can say,” the 
little girl thought. “ And really that is a good deal 



ON THE ROAD TO LEARNING . 
































































LOOKING FOR ALICE 


l 7 

for a frog. I wish I had asked him if he had seen 
Alice.” 

But the Green Frog had vanished. 

There was a narrow footpath leading from the 
pool across the fields, and at the side of the path 
stood a finger post, and on it was printed : 

ROYAL ROAD TO LEARNING 

“ I’m sure I don’t want to go to learning,” Harriet 
said to herself, as she walked around the bank of the 
pool, for it was vacation and she thought she had 
had quite lessons enough at home. But wherever 
she stopped, there was the signpost before her and 
the narrow road to Learning, reaching to her feet, 
just as the rays of the sun make a path to your feet 
over the waters, go where you will. 

“ Oh, dear ! ” sighed Harriet. “ I don’t see the use 
of having a finger post at all.” 

As she spoke, to her astonishment, the finger post 
beckoned to her and then pointed out the road once 
more, and there, in the distance, she saw the red roof 
of a cottage nestling among the tree tops. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ There is no use in my staying here,” she decided 
at length, “ and perhaps they will know at the Red 
House where Alice lives, and perhaps Mary Ann or 
the Duchess will come to the door.” 

“ Please, ma’am,” she went on, dropping a courtesy, 
“ can you tell me where Alice lives ? I wish I knew 
where. How strange it all is ! I feel as if I were in 
a dream or under a magic spell.” 

She had scarcely finished when she saw the Frog 
looking at her once more ; that is, she could not see 
the Frog, but his dull, round eyes looked at her out 
of space, like large, round buttons on a black coat. 

“ If you want anything, spell it,” said the Frog, in 
his hoarse voice. 

“Spell what?” asked Harriet. 

“ I-T,” said the Frog, and his eyes shut up with a 
snap. 

“ Frog, come back ! ” she called, but no frog ap- 
peared. “ What did he mean by ‘ Spell it ’ ? Oh, 
Frog, come back ! ” she called again. “ F-R-O-G ! ” 

As soon as she had spelled his name, to her great 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


19 


delight, she saw the Frog. He was sitting on the 
bank of the pool again, and was busily engaged in 
putting on a pair of rubber boots. 

“ Well,” he croaked, and his voice was hoarser 
than ever. “ Do you know what you want this 
time?” 

“ I want to find the little girl in the well,” said 
Harriet. 

“You won’t find her in the well, if you don’t learn 
to spell well,” he croaked. 

“ But I don’t want to find her in the well at all,” 
Harriet explained. 

“You can’t spell all that, you know,” said the 
Frog. “ Not unless you spell water first.” 

“No water, no well ; 

No water, dry spell.” 

“ That sounds like poetry,” said Harriet. 

“ It happens to be common sense,” said the Frog. 
“ Make it a rule not to believe what you hear.” 

This was not a very good beginning, Harriet 
thought, and so after a moment she said : 


20 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ Why do all the roads go from here to Learning ? ” 

“ Did you ever hear that the truth is at the bottom 
of a well ? ” asked the Frog. “ This is the well of 
truth, and all the roads of learning lead from it.” 

“ Then they must lead to it, too, don’t they ? ” 
asked Harriet, and, indeed, she was quite surprised 
at herself. 

“ Some do, and some don’t,” said the Frog, “ and 
you have to go to Learning to find that out.” 

Harriet wanted to ask the Frog some more ques- 
tions about the well, but his legs were so long and 
his feet were so large that he was having a great 
deal of trouble in putting on his rubber boots. 
Finally, however, he succeeded in drawing them both 
on, and then he fished another pair out of the pool 
and tried to put them on his hands, like a pair of 
mittens. 

“ I wish you’d hold this for me,” he said, giving 
Harriet one of his boots. “ My fingers are all feet 
this morning.” 

“ I don’t see the good of putting on rubber boots 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


21 


after your feet are wet,” Harriet couldn’t help 
remarking, as she helped him. 

“ It all depends upon what you put them on for,” 
said the Frog. “You put on rubbers to keep your 
feet dry, and I put them on to keep my feet wet. 
The world is upside down here, you know.” 

“ Is it ? ” said Harriet, in surprise. “ It doesn’t 
look so.” 

“ That is because everything is upside down 
here,” said the Frog. “ You’re upside down, I’m 
upside down, the water in the well is upside down.” 

“ How can it be ? ” asked Harriet, as the Frog 
paused. 

“ It wouldn’t come out of the top of the well if it 
wasn’t,” said the Frog. 

“ Oh, but that is only when we draw it,” Harriet 
answered, quickly. 

“ Drawing it so, don’t make it so,” said the Frog, 
shaking his head. “ I drew some water once. I 
had water on the brain, I remember, and I drew on 
my imagination with a faucet, and, after I had 


22 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


drawn it, I painted it ; not with oil paints, though, 
because the oil wouldn’t mix with the water.” 

“ How could you paint water, when it hasn’t any 
color?” asked Harriet, who was dreadfully puzzled 
by this time. 

“ Oh, that was easy enough,” said the Frog. “ I 
used water-color paints, and it made a beautiful 
picture, I can tell you. But the trouble was that 
when the water dried up, only the pitcher re- 
mained.” 

The Frog paused again, and after a moment 
Harriet asked : 

“ Did you say picture or pitcher ? ” 

“ Something to draw the water in, you know,” 
said the Frog. 

“ But you said the water dried up,” said Harriet. 

“ So it did,” said the Frog, “ and the drawing 
remained. It remained to be seen.” 

“ I don’t think I quite understand,” Harriet 
began, but the Frog interrupted her with : 

“ Of course you don’t, if you don’t think. Make 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


2 3 


it a rule to think twice before you understand 
once.” 

As he said this, the Frog closed his eyes and shut 
his mouth, and all that Harriet could see was a 
little heap of rubber boots lying by the side of the 
pool. It was very unsatisfactory, and she was on 
the point of walking away, when the Frog called 
after her : 

“ Come back ! ” 

Harriet did as he bade her, although it really 
seemed ridiculous to come back to somebody she 
couldn’t see. 

“ If you want to find Alice,” the Frog croaked, 
“you must take the Royal Road to Learning.” 

“ In which direction ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Oh, in any,” said the Frog. “ You can’t miss 
it.” 

“ I might start in the wrong direction,” said 
Harriet. 

“ That,” said the Frog, “ depends on who gives 
the directions. First go to the Red House and 


24 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


learn to read, then turn to the right and learn to 
write.” 

“ What nonsense ! ” thought Harriet, as she walked 
away. But long after she had left the pool, she 
could hear him shouting all sorts of directions, and 
a confused medley of words, such as “ subtrac- 
tion . . . and forests . . . and pies . . . and giants,” 
were wafted to her ears. 


CHAPTER II 

ON THE ROYAL ROAD TO LEARNING 

“The first thing for me to do is to find the Red 
House,’ 1 Harriet said to herself, as the voice of the 
Green Frog died away in the distance, “ and the 
second thing is to be sure not to lose my way ” ; for 
Harriet had heard stories of little girls who had 
gone out walking by themselves without leave and 
had not come back until long after supper-time, 
and she thought it bad enough for them to lose 
their way, but much worse to lose their suppers. 

“ I don’t suppose I could lose my way, though,” 
she reflected, “ because, somehow, I feel as if I had 
been here before, unless I have dreamed about it 
sometime, or else I really have been here before and 
am dreaming about it now. I wonder which it is. 
Let me see: if I were awake, of course, I should 
know I was not asleep. But if I were asleep and 
dreamed I was awake, why, then, I couldn’t wake 


25 


26 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


up to know I was asleep until I stopped dreaming 
that I was awake ! Oh, dear ! perhaps I am walk- 
ing and talking in my sleep now, and I know they 
wouldn’t like that at home.” 

“ Come, Harriet,” she said, severely, “ if you will 
walk about in your sleep like this, I shall have to 
pinch you ! But I don’t remember,” she added, 
rather mournfully, “ whether you pinch yourself 
when you are asleep to find out if you are awake, 
or when you are awake to find out if you are 
asleep ! ” And, indeed, it was most perplexing. 

Yet, despite these doubts, it was very pleasant to 
walk along the Royal Road to Learning. Great 
trees, on either hand, arched themselves overhead 
with interlacing branches and formed a leafy canopy, 
through which the sunbeams darted in shafts of 
quivering light. Birds of bright plumage sang and 
twittered, as they hopped from bough to bough, and, 
here and there, between the tree trunks were 
glimpses of blossoming hedgerows and green fields 
stretching far away into the distance, while, near 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


27 


r 


at hand, the little childish figure walked, with the 
golden hair pushed back from above the eager, ques- 
tioning eyes, and the little feet tripping daintily 
over the dust which will collect in spots, even in 
the Royal Road to Learning; for, withal that it is 
such a pleasant 
road, there are 
stretches along it 
that are always 
dusty because they 
are so dry. 

How lovely it all 
was ! — -and what a 
pity there was no 
one there to share 
her pleasure with 
her! — for, though 
there were a great 
many footprints in 
the dust — “ and 
there can’t be footprints without feet, nor feet with- 



28 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


out people ” — there was no one in sight ; and when 
she looked back, she found that not only had the 
Green Frog and the pool disappeared, but that 
the road itself and the trees and fields also were 
vanishing behind her, step by step, “as if she was 
walking on the very edge of the world!” 

It really was quite alarming, but then, how much 
more alarming it would have been if the road had 
taken to vanishing in front of her, instead of be- 
hind her! — for she felt quite sure that if the road 
had once gotten ahead of her, she could never, never, 
have caught up with it again, and where would 
she have been then? 

“ I wonder if I am a given point,” the little girl 
thought, for she had heard of the time it takes a 
procession to pass a “ given point,” and had won- 
dered what the “ given point ” was, and who gave it. 
“ Only I am the procession, and they are standing 
still,” she concluded, “ which would take the same 
amount of time, after all.” 

“ I’m glad I’m not at home now,” she went on. 


L 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


29 


“Just fancy going out for a walk and not being 
able to go back, or even to stop if you wanted to.” 

But after stopping, just for a moment, to see 
what would happen, she found that the Royal Road 
to Learning was very obliging and stopped whenever 
she did, and for as long a time as she did, which 
gave her such a comfortable feeling that she began 
to look about her with much interest as she walked 
along. 

It seemed natural enough for the ends of the 
nearest branches of the trees to go first as she passed 
by them, but it did seem strange for the branches on 
the farther side to be waving gently in the wind 
long after the trunks of the trees had disappeared. 

They were just the sort of trees that the Cheshire 
Cat would have felt at home in, Harriet thought. 
It would have been so much easier for the Cat to 
vanish with the branch she was sitting on than to 
vanish from it, and so the little girl scanned the 
trees closely in the hope of seeing the familiar face, 
or at least the familiar grin, appear somewhere 


3 ° 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


amongst the leaves. “ Purr or fur,” either of them 
would have been such a comfort. 

But there was no sign of the Cheshire Cat, and, 
after all, the trees were so different from ordinary 
trees that perhaps it would have been extraordinary 
if the Cheshire Cat had appeared in them, and, if it 
had, it certainly would not have grinned. 

The trunks of the trees were all covered with 
russet leather and studded with brass nails, like 
Great-grandmama’s leather trunk at home, or else 
they were nicely bound in tree calf, with their titles 
done neatly in trefoil on them, just as if they were 
books instead of trees, and for the matter of that, 
the leaves, too, were like the leaves of books, being 
printed all over on both sides and making a pleasant 
rustling noise, like a new edition, on the various 
branches of learning from which they hung. 

It seemed impossible that any one ever could find 
time to read so many books; for Harriet did not 
know that many people are contented with merely 
looking at the backs of them, as they hurry by, and 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


3 1 

that there are some who do not even do this. In- 
deed, she did not know then (for she had a great 
many things to learn) that, although the Royal Road 
to Learning is open to all alike, there are no two 
who travel it in the same way; and this, perhaps, 
was the reason why she thought she was alone 
upon it. 

“ I don’t see why all the 
trees have circles of tar painted 
about their trunks,” she 
thought, “ especially as there is 
no one here to climb up them.” 

For Harriet had supposed, 
always, that the bands of tar 
on the apple trees at home 
were put there to keep little 
people from sitting in the 
branches, and she was on the 
point of reaching up to touch one of the black rings, 
just to see if it was sticky, when a little voice close 
by said, softly: 



32 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ That is not tar, that is printer’s ink, and it keeps 
the bookworms from eating the leaves.” 

It was such a gentle little voice that Harriet was 
not at all startled by it, although she could see no 
one and the voice sounded as though it was quite 
near her. It was followed by a deep sigh. 

“ It must be the Looking-glass Gnat,” she thought, 
“ and that is why I can’t see it ; only it was the size 
of a chicken — Alice said it was, though I don’t see 
how it could be so big as that — but then, that was 
afterwards, and I dare say that it grew upon ac- 
quaintance.” And she was so pleased with this 
idea that she was on the point of thinking it all 
over again, when the little voice continued. 

“ I am so lonely here,” it whispered, “ that when 
you stopped, I ventured to speak, because I was 
quite sure that you didn’t see me.” 

“ Indeed, I didn’t,” said Harriet, with much earnest- 
ness, for she didn’t want any one to think her rude. 
“ And I can’t see you now, either,” she added, truth- 
fully, for it is rather puzzling to carry on a conversa- 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


33 


tion with some one you can’t see, unless you are 
talking through the telephone, and sometimes it is 
puzzling even then. “ I wish you would tell me 
where you are — that is, if you don’t mind.” 

“ I am on the end of this branch,” the little voice 
answered, “ and you can’t see me because the end of 
the branch has disappeared.” 

“ I shouldn’t think it would be very comfortable 
to sit on the end of something that has disappeared,” 
said Harriet. 

“It isn’t very comfortable,” the little voice ex- 
plained, with still another sigh, “ but I have no 
choice. I am the letter H, and ‘ branch ’ ends with 
H, you know; and so when the end of the branch 
disappeared, I disappeared with it.” 

“ Then how can you expect people to see you, if you 
have disappeared ? ” asked Harriet, to whom this 
seemed rather unreasonable. But the voice only 
sighed deeply in answer. Presently, however, it 
began again. 

“ There are a great many people who know me 


34 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


well enough by sight, who drop me altogether when 
it comes to a speaking acquaintance,” it said. 
“ Now you might be ’Arriet instead of Harriet, if 
you dropped your H’s, you know.” 

“ I should think you would have an easier time 
than some of the other letters,” said Harriet. 

“ So I would, if people didn’t insist on dragging 
me into the conversation where I don’t belong,” said 
the little voice, sadly. “ The vowels don’t like it 
when I am crowded in ahead of them. I wish you 
could hear how they talk behind my back.” And 
once more the little voice sighed deeply. 

It was very unhappy, evidently, and Harriet 
“ would have said something pitying to comfort it, 
if it only would sigh like other people,” she thought. 

“ I wish you wouldn’t sigh so much,” was what 
she really did say. “ I don’t believe sighing makes 
you feel a bit better.” 

“ Those are not sighs, they are aspirations,” said 
the little voice. “ I am H aspirate. If I was H 
silent, I should be seen and not heard ; but I am 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


35 

just the opposite, and so I am heard and not 
seen.” 

Here the little voice was lost in such a succession 
of long-drawn aspirations that they raised quite a 
commotion in the air, and Harriet felt that she was 
being slowly lifted from the ground and wafted over 
the hedge, at the side of the Royal Road to Learn- 
ing, into the Land of Letters. 

Fortunately, she 
managed to catch hold 
of a little twig, as she 
floated by, and soon 
found herself sitting 
on the very branch at the end of 
which the letter H was hidden. 

“ Where are you, H ? ” she 
called, softly, as she parted the 
leaves and looked in vain for 
the letter which -she was sure 
she should recognize. 

But the little voice made no answer, although the 



36 LOOKING FO,R ALICE 

leaves rustled in a little breeze that sounded almost 
like a tiny whisper, and so Harriet cautiously worked 
her way out towards the end of the branch as far as 
she dared. 

“ For I really couldn’t feel easy if I had to sit on 
nothing at all,” she thought ; and so, when the 
branch, which spread far out over the green turf 
below, began to bend down a little with her weight, 
she sat upright again, and holding on tightly with 
both hands, looked down over the Land of Letters 
with much interest. 





CHAPTER III 

THE LAND OF LETTERS 

The Land of Letters was like a park, or garden, 
and was laid out in huge flower-beds, in the shapes 
of all the letters of the alphabet, and between the 
flower-beds were broad walks of white gravel, bor- 
dered by neat rows of letter-boxes painted a nice, 
bright green. 

There were a number of little people in the garden, 
busily engaged in weeding the beds and raking the 
walks, and directly under the branch Harriet was sit- 
ting on, a gardener and a gardeness (somehow this 
last word didn’t sound quite right to Harriet, al- 
though she had a governess at home), a gardener 
and a gardeness were down on their knees, looking 
intently for something in the grass. 

“ It’s very provoking after so much trouble,” said 
the Gardener. His back was so bent that he looked, 
for all the world, like the letter R. “ But, of course, 


37 


38 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


when she went I lost the handle off my hoe, and the 
Queen will be furious when she hears of it.” 

“Why didn’t you try to catch her again, R?” 
asked the Gardeness. 

“ I did try,” said R, sullenly, “ and all I could 
catch was her expression. 

And, much to Harriet’s 
amusement, R took a small 
looking-glass out 
of his pocket and 
handed it to his 
companion, who 
examined it with 

much care. Harriet, also, leaned down as 
far as she could from the branch, and, to her 
surprise, she saw the reflection of her own 
face on the polished surface. 

“ I do believe he has caught my likeness,” she ex- 
claimed aloud, and at that the Gardener and the 
Gardeness dropped the glass and looked up. 

“ There she is ! ” cried R, in great excitement, and 




LOOKING FOR ALICE 


39 


in an instant all the letters came running from all 
parts of the garden and stood beneath her in a little 
crowd, all staring and looking up and talking at 
once. 

“ Bring a box . . . and a chair . . . or a ladder . . . 
and a piece of string ! ” they called ; each one shout- 
ing and giving directions, and no one apparently 
doing anything at all. 

“ If you please, I am a little girl,” Harriet said. 
Whereupon all the letters were silent, and presently 
R said (he was the oldest one, and appeared to be 
the Head Gardener) : 

“ Now, H, you’d much better come down out of 
that.” 

“ But I am not H, I am Harriet,” she answered. 

“ Of course, any letter knows H stands for Har- 
riet,” said the Gardeness, pointing to Harriet’s frock; 
and there, sure enough, was the letter H fastened to 
her apron, only it really looked much more like the 
border of the apron than it did like the letter H. “ I 
know H when I see it, I should hope.” 


40 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ But that isn’t H,” said Harriet, who was becom- 
ing alarmed, for there were now a great many letters 
standing below her; “or, if it is H, it is only a 
shadow.” 

“You can’t have shadow without substance,” said 
R, obstinately. “ If you aren’t H, who are you ? ” 

“ If you please, sir, I am a little girl,” Harriet 
began again, “ a very little girl.’ 

For Harriet, like most people who start upon the 
Royal Road to Learning, felt smaller and smaller as 
she went along. 

“You’re far too little to know as many letters as 
there are here,” said the Gardeness. “ However, as 
you have made so much trouble, you may as well tell 
us what you do know,” and the chorus of little voices 
began again : 

“Yes, tell us what you do know — tell us what 
you do know.” 

“But I really don’t know — ” Harriet commenced. 
Whereat the little voices all cried in chorus : 

“ Then tell us what you don’t know.” 




A GARDENER AND A GAKDENESS. 









LOOKING FOR ALICE 


4i 


And, to her own astonishment, Harriet folded her 
hands and repeated the following verses : 

(“ Only I don’t see how I could repeat what I had 
never heard before,” she said afterwards.) 

“ There once was a man 
Who flew up in the air 

For a mile and a quarter, at least; 

And as he went higher, 

Of course he began 

To look small as the distance increased. 

“ The neighbors all opened 
Their mouths and looked up, 

To follow the man in his flight ; 

But the man looked so small 

That nothing at all i 

Could scarce have looked more out of sight. 

“ To make him explain 
When he came down again 

The neighbors felt strongly inclined. 

He came down safe and sound, 

But he very soon found 

Out of sight means to be out of mind.” 

“ I don’t call that much of a poem ! ” said the Gar- 
deness, as soon as Harriet had finished. “ I could 


42 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


understand every word of it. It’s just like, 'What 
goes up must come down/ ” 

“ Oh, but that wasn’t the question,” Harriet said, 
eagerly. But the Gardeness cut her short with : 

“The question is, When are you coming down?” 
And to Harriet’s surprise (she could not explain 
afterwards how it happened) she found herself once 
more upon the ground, and all the letters appeared 
to have gone back to their work — that is, all except 
the Gardeness, who stood before her and patted her 
on the head from time to time, as she said : 

“ Now this is what I call common sense.” 

The Gardeness kept on doing this over and 
over again until Harriet felt quite giddy, and asked 
her, as politely as she could, if she would mind 
stopping. 

“For why?” the Gardeness inquired, kindly. 
“And speaking of mind stopping, the mind can’t 
stop, you know, so you might just as well stop 
minding as for me To mind stopping,” and she 
patted Harriet again. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


43 


“ Such a wise little head,” she went on, “ so 
nice and empty, and so much room to think in ! ” 

“ I don’t call that very nice,” said Harriet, as she 
stepped back, for the Gardeness was trying to pat 
her again. 

“For why?” said the Gardeness, and this time 
she patted Harriet with her rake. “ Now my head 
is so full of other people’s ideas that I haven’t any 
room for my own — letter-full, that’s what I call it.” 

Saying which, the Gardeness tucked her rake 
under one arm, and her other arm through Harriet’s. 

“ Come,” she went on, “ we must go to the Queen; 
the messengers have been looking for you everywhere.” 

“ Do you mean Haigha ? ” Harriet asked, eagerly. 

“ And likewise Hatta,” said the Gardeness, “ and 
well they may, for they would both lose their heads 
if they didn’t find you. For why? They both 
begin with H.” 

“ But really and truly, I am a little girl,” Harriet 
repeated once more. But the Gardeness only shook 

her and said: 

( 


44 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ Not in here, you know, you can’t be. For why? 
This is the Land of Letters.” 

“ Aren’t there any little girls here at all ? ” Harriet 
asked, anxiously, for she did want to find Alice so 
much. 

“ There were some men of letters here once,” said 
the Gardeness, “ but all the little girls are outside in 
the road. They are as thick out there — as thick as 
molasses.” 

Harriet wondered how thick molasses was. 

“ I will explain,” said the Gardeness, just as if the 
little girl had spoken aloud. “ You know that a 
little girl is a lass, I suppose, and lasses means 
more than one lass, and molasses means more than 
more than one lass, and now you know how thick 
molasses is. There’s stuffing for you ! ” 

“ Is the Queen, the Red Queen or the White 
Queen?” Harriet asked, after a moment, for she 
thought the Gardeness was more confusing in her 
explanations than she was in what she said. 

“ I don’t know what you mean by that,” the 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


45 


Garden ess answered. “ She’s read most when she 
is in black and white, of course ; but she was only- 
just a letter, like you and me, to begin with.” 

“Was she?” said 
Harriet. 

“Yes,” said the Gar- 
deness ; “ first she was 
small a , and then she 
grew and grew until she 
grew to be big A, and 
then she kept on 
growing and grow- 
ing until she grew 
to be a whole word, 
all by herself, A 
or An, and one 
of the parts of 
speech, and now 

she is Queen of the letters, Queen Anne, and she 
lives — ” 

“In the Queen Anne cottage with the red roof, I 



4 6 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


suppose,” said Harriet, as the Gardeness paused for 
breath. 

“ Exactly,” said the Gardeness, “ and it’s a fine 
thing to be a Queen, I can tell you.” 

“ She must be very big, if she has grown so much,” 
Harriet remarked. 

\ 

“ That all depends on her feelings,” said the Gar- 
deness. “ And here she comes,” she added, as a 
great company of letters came around a turn in the 
path. 

First there came the little vowels, e and i and o and 
u , dancing and singing along the path. They were 
dressed in brilliant scarlet, and had lovely hair and 
bright blue eyes. 

“ Oh, aren’t they cunning ! ” Harriet exclaimed, for 
she knew some little people at home with bright eyes 
too. But the Gardeness whispered : 

“ Hush ! Those are the royal children.” 

Next came the letters who had been working in 
the garden. They all looked very hard at Harriet,, 
as they passed, and after them, surrounded by a 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


47 

throng of consonants, came Queen Anne Alphabet 
herself ! 

The Queen was nyuch larger than the other letters, 
and she walked very slowly, lean- 
ing on the arm of a gentleman 
with a long, yellow face, who was 
dressed in newspaper, which crackled 
at every step he took. (Of course 
Harriet recognized him at once as 
an old Looking-glass acquain- 
tance.) 

A little printed page held 
the Queens train, and a 
number of commas and pe- 
riods, drawn up in ranks 
and carrying hyphens and 
question marks as weap- 
ons, brought up the rear. CH 7 

The moment the Queen 
saw Harriet and the Gardeness, she stopped and said 
crossly : 




4 8 


LOOKIN0 FOR ALICE 
“ Who are these ? ” 

The Gardeness dropped a lo\^ courtesy. 

“ If you please, your Majesty^” she began, in a 



\ 


trembling voice, “ this is II.” \ 

“ Its that wretched Gardeness agajh,” the Queen 


said, angrily. “ If you don’t keep on ti\e other side 
of the garden, I’ll have you stretched like a hyphen. 
I will, upon my word.” 

“ May it please your Majesty,” said the Gardeness, 
humbly, “this is the other side of the garden.” 

“ Then keep on the outside,” the Queen growled, 
“or I’ll have you cross-questioned.” 

Two of the commas immediately came forward, 
but the Gardeness dropped her rake and took to her 
heels before they could reach her. 

“ Really, my dear,” said the Gentleman-in-News- 
paper, nervously, “ I think we had better go on. I 
doubt if even a period could have stopped her.” 

The Queen paid no attention whatever to this 
remark, for she was staring at Harriet as hard as 
ever she could. 


/ 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


49 


“ And who is this ? ” she said, at length. 

“If you please, I am a little girl,” said Harriet, 
coming forward. 

“ Hold your tongue,” said the Queen. “ There are 
no little girls in this kind of garden ” (and she said 
this so that ; t sounded like ‘kindergarten.’) 

“ My dear,” said the Gentleman-in-Newspaper, 
feebly. He had stepped behind the Queen, as if he 
was afraid that Harriet might recognize him. “ My 
dear, unless my eyes deceive me, this is the H you 
dropped this morning that Hatta and Haigha have 
been looking for.” 

“ She’s no business to grow so fast, if she is,” the 
Queen retorted. “ What does she mean by it ? ” 

“ I’m sorry I can’t help growing,” Harriet said, by 
way of explanation, but the Queen only frowned and 
said, severely: 

“ Little H’s should be seen and not heard.” 

“ But I am H aspirate,” Harriet replied, for she 
was almost as tall as the Queen by this time, who 
was only the height of one short syllable, after all. 


f 


1 

50 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“You’re very exasperating,” said the Queen, and 
the semicolons and commas laughed very hard in- 
deed at this. 

“ You may approach me,” the Queen resumed, in 
a milder tone. “ I suppose you think you are big 
enough to have a name ? ” 

“ My name is Harriet,” said the little girl. 

“ Harriet,” the Queen repeated, “ Harriet — Harriet 
and Haigha and Hatta. Hat and Hair — of course, 
they go together. Can you fetch and carry?” 

“ I might try,” said Harriet. 

“ Then come with me,” the Queen cried, in a tone 
of satisfaction. “You shall take the twins to 
school.” 

And saying this, the Queen turned and led 
Harriet towards the Red House. 


V 


CHAPTER IV 

QUEEN ANNE 

The path was broad and smooth, and Harriet 
walked between the Queen and the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper, and behind them came all the letters, 
with the commas and periods bringing up the rear, 
“ just as if they were at the end of a sentence/’ 

The Queen was only a little taller than Harriet, 
but she wore a cloak of royal ermine, which made 
her see much larger than she really was. Indeed, 
it made her seem very much like a huge penwiper 
out for a walk, for it had little black tails, in the 
shape of the letter A, spotted all over it, as if some- 
body had been using it to wipe an inky pen. 

“You needn’t be afraid,” the Queen remarked, in 
a patronizing tone, when she noticed that Harriet 
was looking at her. “ I dare say you never expected 
to meet a real, live queen.” 

“ I was hoping to meet the. Red Queen or the 

5 1 


52 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


Queen of Hearts, please your Majesty,” Harriet 
said, timidly, and her heart beat very fast, for appar- 
ently the Queen was not at all pleased, as she 
answered in a loud tone: 

“ I don’t know anything about red queens, or 
heart queens either, for that matter. There’s only 
one queen where I am, and that’s enough.” 

“ Quite so — very true,” the Gentleman-in-News- 
paper interposed, much to Harriet’s relief, for the 
Queen seemed quite put out. “Just what I said 
myself, one day last autumn — you remember, my 
dear,” he said, turning to the Queen. “We had 
butter beans for dinner, and you remarked, speaking 
of queens, you know — ” 

“ Rubbish ! ” said the Queen, snappishly. 

“ But, my dear,” remonstrated the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper, “ we did have butter beans, because you 
said — ” 

“ When I say rubbish,” the Queen interrupted him, 
“ I mean you talk too much, and I can’t a-bear it, and 
I won’t.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


53 

“ But I have not said anything yet,” protested the 
Gentleman-i n-Newspaper. 

“ If you said more and talked less, you’d get on 
better,” the Queen retorted, and the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper looked so crushed at this that Harriet felt 
it was high time for her to come to the rescue. 

“ You said you would tell me about the twins, your 
Majesty,” she ventured to remind the Queen, more in 
the hope of diverting her attention than because she 
was interested in the twins ; for it is rather hard to be- 
come really interested in children you have never seen. 

The Queen, however, was much pleased, for the 
frown on her face melted into a broad smile and, in a 
moment, she had tucked her arm comfortably through 
Harriet’s and snuggled close up to her. 

“The trouble I’ve had with those boys!” she began. 
“ They will get mixed, like a pair of boots in a hurry. 
If only they had been two nice little vowels instead, 
it would have been so different.” 

“ Yes, indeed, it would,” chimed in the Gentleman- 
in-Newspaper. “And that makes me think — ” 


54 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“What are their names?” Harriet asked, hastily, 
for the Queen was looking daggers at the luckless 
Gentleman-in-N ewspaper. 

“They haven’t any in particular that I’m aware of,’' 
the Queen said, with a sigh. “ At first there was no 
use in naming them at all, because there was no tell- 
ing which was which; and afterwards it made no dif- 
ference, because the wrong one always answered ; so 
I just call them ‘ You ’ for one, and ‘ Double-you ’ for 
two, instead of using real names, and I find they 
answer quite as well.” 

“ Do you mean the names answer, or the twins 
answer ? ’^Harriet inquired, in a puzzled tone. 

“ Oh, either,” said the Queen, “ either or both ; and 
when they all answer at once, you’ve no idea what a 
noise they make.” 

“ Especially in hot weather,” the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper put in. “The days are apt to be so long 
in summer.” 

“ Idiot ! ” growled the Queen, but before she got 
any further, Harriet said, quickly: 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


55 


“ I should have thought they would have liked 
names of their own — like Tweedledum and Tweedle- 
dee, for instance.” 

“ I don’t know who they may be,” said the Queen, 
“ which is why I can’t tell if the twins are like them, 
but they certainly are very like each other. In fact, 
they are so much alike that when they are together 
you can’t tell them apart.” 

“ But if they are together, your Majesty, I don’t see 
what difference that would make,” Harriet rejoined, 
brightly, and she was quite ready for a good long ar- 
gument, but the Queen only said : 

“ There isn’t any difference, so, of course, you can’t 
see it.” 

“ And if there was, you couldn’t see it either, because 
the difference would be between them,” the Gentleman- 
in-Newspaper added. 

“ We used to tie a piece of string around one of 
them so as to remember which he was, but they are too 
old for that now,” the Queen went on, ignoring the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper completely. 


56 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ And the string used to break,” the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper continued, cheerfully, “ mostly on Sunday 
mornings, on account,of the late breakfast. Why, I 
remember one Sunday morning — I wore a pair of 
embroidered slippers at the time, and the twins — ” 

“ Silence ! ” cried the Queen. “ If I hear another 
word from you, 111 have you twistgd into lamp- 
lighters ! ” 

At this dreadful threat the Gentleman-in-Newspaper 
shrunk inside his paper collar and cuffs, until he was 
almost out of sight, and Harriet, who was on pins 
and needles lest something should happen to him 
before she had a chance to ask him about Alice (he 
seemed so good at remembering, she thought), asked 
the Queen hurriedly how old she said the twins 
were. 

“ I didn’t say, and what’s more I don’t know,” the 
Queen replied, while she scowled at the Gentleman- 
in-Newspaper so that her face looked like a thunder- 
cloud. “ They are either twice as old as one, or half 
as old as two, I can’t recollect which, and the aggra- 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


57 


vating part of it is they will keep on growing the 
same age all the time — there’s no stopping them.” 

The Gentleman-in-Newspaper opened his mouth at 
this, but, luckily for him, he only gasped and shut it 
again without saying anything. 

“ I should think that one of them might grow to 
be bigger than the other,” Harriet suggested. 

“We’d never know which one it was,” the Queen 
replied, in a discontented tone. “ Besides, I’ve tried 
that, and somehow it wouldn’t work.” 

“ How do you mean, it wouldn’t work ? ” the little 
girl asked. 

“The yeast wouldn’t,” said the Queen. “When I 
gave it to one and put him to bed, the other went and 
swelled ; yeast is swelling, you know.” 

“ Why did you put him to bed ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Early to bed, early to rise,” said the Queen. 

“ Perhaps you put the wrong one to bed,” said 
Harriet. 

“ No, I didn’t,” said the Queen. “ He cried like 
anything, and that is a sure sign of yeast.” 

I- 


5§ 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ ‘ When the wind is in the yeast, 

It isn’t good for man nor beast.’” 

Harriet was sure there was something wrong about 
this rhyme, but as the Queen had repeated it in a 
tone of satisfaction, and she could not recall at the 
moment exactly how it went, she contented herself 
with saying : 

“ I shouldn’t think yeast would be good for them 
at all.” 

“ It’s the very best thing for raising children,” said 
the Queen. 

“You mean bread, don’t you?” asked Harriet. 

“ Well bred, of course,” said the Queen. “ How 
clever you are !” 

Now, this again was not precisely what Harriet 
had meant ; but as the Queen appeared to be in a good 
humor, and clasped her arm most affectionately, she 
only said : 

“ I should think, so long as one of them swelled, it 
would have done as well.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean by ‘ done a swell,’ ” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


59 

said the Queen, “ and what’s more, I don’t believe you 
do either.” 

Naturally this remark was rather discouraging ; 
and as the Queen, who still clung to Harriet’s arm, 
made no effort to renew the conversation, the little 
girl was silent also, and took the opportunity to look 
about her as they walked along. 

It was certainly a beautiful garden, and everything 
was kept in the most beautiful order. 

“ No loose punctuation lying about in the paths to 
stumble over, and no slang weeds choking young 
ideas in the forcing beds,” the Queen explained, with 
an air of pride, as she leaned heavily against Harriet. 

It keeps them busy enough here, I can tell you. 
Why, I have a fresh bunch of weeds on the table 
every morning.” 

“ Don’t you pick the flowers, too ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Of course not. What should I pick the flowers 
for ? ” said the Queen. “ If I did, I should have 
nothing but weeds left shortly.” 

“ I should pick the flowers,” said Harriet. 


6o 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ That's because you are a philanthropist," said the 
Queen. “ If you owned the flower-beds, you’d do just 
as I do." 

Harriet was too polite to contradict, but she thought 
she could pick bunches and bunches of flowers with- 
out their being missed ; for there were a great many 
flower-beds, and the flowers 
were all in bloom — asters 
in one bed and bachelor’s 
buttons in the next, and car- 
nations in the third, and 
then daisies, and so on down 
the alphabet to pansies and 
roses and violets, without 
any regard to time or season, 
and, to the little girls de- 
light, she presently spied one bed in the shape of 
the letter H, filled with heliotrope. With a little sigh 
of pleasure, she stopped before it to inhale the gentle 
fragrance, and, lost in this sweet feast of sight and 
smell, she quite forgot where she was, until the 



\ 







“I WISH YOU WOULDN'T CROWD SO/' 





LOOKING FOR ALICE 


61 

Gentleman-in-Newspaper recalled her to her surround- 
ings by saying in a complaining tone : 

“ I wish you wouldn’t crowd so. I have to walk 
sideways to keep in the path at all.” 

“ But I can’t help it,” said Harriet. “ The Queen 
is crowding me.” As indeed she was. 

“ Then ask her to walk in the middle of the path, 
will you ? ” said the Gentleman-in-Newspaper. 

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” said Harriet, 
to whom it seemed ridiculous that the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper should ask her to tell the Queen that she 
was too near to him. 

“ I haven’t time,” he said, sulkily. “ At your age I 
would just as soon have done it as not.” 

“ Oh, I forgot that she told you not to talk,” said 
Harriet. “ But, really, I don’t think she’d mind your 
saying anything sensible — that is,” she hastened to 
add, for the Gentleman-in-Newspaper looked extremely 
mortified, “ I’m quite sure she would — ” 

“ You needn’t mind him, at all events,” the Queen 
said in Harriet’s ear. She was so close to her and 


62 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


breathed so hard that Harriet felt as if she was in the 
middle of a crowd. “ He’s not in my way, — not in 
the least.” 

“ He says he thinks there is more room in the 
middle of the path than there is on the sides, your 
Majesty,” Harriet answered. 

“ If there was,” said the Queen, “ the sides would be 
in the middle, which they aren’t, so you needn’t mind 
what he thinks.” 

“ But he might fall,” said Harriet, anxiously, for 
the Gentleman-in-Newspaper looked quite crumpled 
and was keeping on his feet only by the most frantic 
efforts, “ and if he did, he’d be sure to cut himself, he 
is so very thin.” 

“ He’s fat enough of a Sunday,” said the Queen, 
“ and as for falling, no doubt he would if he got the 
chance. As it is, he can’t, because there isn’t room 
enough for him to fall down in.” 

“ He might fall into a flower-bed,” said Harriet. 

“ The idea of mail matter like him getting through 
the letter-boxes ! ” the Queen exclaimed, with a short 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


6 S 


laugh. “ He couldn’t if he tried until he was yellow. 
Fancy a newspaper man in among my Greek roots 
and flowers of speech ! Nice work he’d make of 
them ! ” 

“ Oh, hush, please, he’ll hear you ! ” Harriet whis- 
pered. “ I beg your pardon,” she said, in another 
whisper, for the Queen looked very cross at this, “ but 
I’m sure he will hear you, and then his feelings will 
be hurt.” 

“ They don’t have feelings, newspaper men don’t,” 
the Queen said, in the same tone as before. 

“ But they must,” Harriet persisted. 

“ Then they aren’t newspaper men, and that settles 
it,” the Queen replied, sharply. 


f 


CHAPTER V 

A LITTLE GAME OF CARDS 

They proceeded in silence, after this, and Harriet 
felt much relieved when they came to the end of their 
walk without any mishap. The path opened on to a 
large, square lawn of closely cut grass. At the middle 
of each side of the square was a path like the one they 
had left, and the four paths were marked “ North,” 
“ South,” “East” and “West,” as if they were the 
four points of the compass. 

Scattered about the lawn were a great number of 
little tables, at which the letters seated themselves, 
while the Queen walked directly to a small, square 
table in the exact centre of the grass plat, about which 
four chairs were placed. She took the chair nearest 
the north, and, picking up a pack of cards which 
were lying on the table, she turned to Harriet and 
said solemnly: 

“Do you play cards?” 


64 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 65 

“ I used to play Old Maid at home, your Majesty — 
that is, once,” the little girl answered, truthfully. 

“ I don’t know what you mean by * used to once/ ” 
said the Queen, “and you are much too young to 
play so difficult a game as Old Maid at home. Do 
you play whist?” 

“ I should like to learn,” Harriet said, timidly, for 
the Queen was very, very solemn, and she did not 
know until long afterwards how very solemn people 
become when they expect to play whist. 

“ She says she would like to learn,” the Queen 
repeated. “ Sit down.” 

The Queen pointed to the seat at her right, and 
Harriet sat down. 

“You shall play against B and me,” the Queen went 
on. “ I wish you would stop shuffling your feet about 
and sit down, B,” she said, crossly, to the Gentleman- 
in-Newspaper. “ If you must shuffle like that, you’d 
much better be shuffling the cards.” 

At this, the Gentleman-in-Newspaper turned as 
white as a sheet of newspaper can turn, and he 


66 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


trembled so, as he took the cards, that the Queen 
glared at him and said, savagely : 

“ If you drop them, I’ll have you folded up,” which 
made him tremble more than ever. 

“ So his name is B,” thought Harriet, as she looked 
about her at all the letters, who were all shuffling cards 
by this time and looking very solemnly at each other. 
“ I suppose they must all be here. It’s just like a 
great game of letters, or like — 

“ ‘ Great A, little a, Bouncing B, 

The cat’s in the cupboard 
And she can’t see me.’ ” 

Only there isn’t any cupboard, and there isn’t any 
cat, and I’m not quite sure there is any me either,” 
for Harriet was beginning to doubt whether she was 
really herself or not. 

“You’ve no right to be thinking if you are going 
to play whist,” said the Queen, sharply. “ It’s against 
the rules.” 

“ I’m afraid I don’t know the rules, your Majesty,’* 
Harriet answered, meekly enough. 



THE CARD PARTY. 


































































































































































LOOKING FOR ALICE 


67 


“You’d be much more afraid if you did,” the 
Queen retorted, and taking the cards from the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper, who had mixed them all 
up, faces and backs together, she said : 

“And now, what do you want to play for?” 

“ Because you asked me to,” Harriet answered, 
readily, and she was not a little surprised and per- 
plexed when the Queen said, with a toss of her 
head : 

“ Is that all? Then we will play as usual.” 

“ What do you want to play for ? ” Harriet asked 
her. 

“ I play to win,” said the Queen, in a vexed tone. 

“ But you can’t always expect to win,” the little 
girl said. 

“ If I didn’t,” the Queen replied, “ I shouldn’t care 
about playing. Will you cut the cards ? ” and she 
offered the pack to Harriet. 

“ Cut,” she said again, as Harriet hesitated and 
then said : 

“ I haven’t anything to cut them with.” 


68 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


The Queen appeared very angry indeed at this, 
and said, stiffly : - 

“ That is your affair, not mine/’ and began to deal 
the cards, one at a time, into four separate piles. It 
took her quite a while to do this, for she looked at 
each card before she put it down, and if it was one 
that she wanted for herself, she put it into her own 
pile, which, of course, made it difficult to remember 
to whom the next card belonged. 

Harriet thought this a good opportunity to speak 
to the Gentleman-in-Newspaper. 

“ How do you do again ? ” she said to him, in a 
whisper. Evidently he was much agitated ; for he 
sat on the very edge of his chair and kept tearing 
little pieces of paper off the binding of his coat and * 
putting them into his pocket. “ I’m afraid you don’t 
remember me,” she added. 

The Gentleman-in-Newspaper looked at her va- 
cantly. 

“ I never can remember, when I play whist,” he 
said, in a hollow tone. As he spoke, he tore off 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 69 

quite a large piece of his coat and put that into his 
pocket also. 

“ I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Harriet said. 

“ Why not ? ” he asked. 

“ Because clothes are made to wear,” she answered. 

“ And mine are made to wear and tear,” he rejoined, 
“ and the Gardeness said, the last time she played, 
that she’d rather have a pocket without clothes than 
clothes without a pocket.’ ’ 

“ I would rather have both,” Harriet remarked, 
sagely. 

“ Some people never are satisfied,” returned the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper ; and he put several of the 
cards into his pocket as he went on. “ The Garden- 
ess has some very good ideas — three of them, in 
fact — and that is one.” 

“ Why doesn’t she play now?” Harriet inquired ; 
for the chair opposite her was vacant. 

The Gentleman-in-Newspaper glanced nervously 
at the Queen, who was still busily engaged in deal- 
ing the cards, and said : 


7 ° 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ Hush ! The Queen won’t let her.” 

“ Why not ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ She played her rake when the Queen led spades. 
She said it was the nearest she could come to follow- 
ing suit.” 

Harriet tried hard not to laugh at this, and the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper said: 

“ I really wish you wouldn’t. She’ll turn me inside 
out, as sure as ink is ink.” 

Harriet thought the Queen would find it rather 
difficult to do this, for besides buttonholes and pock- 
ets there was very little left to turn. 

“You might tell me a story while we wait,” she 
suggested, “ and then you can do all the talking your- 
self.” 

But the Gentleman-in-Newspaper answered, sadly: 

“ The only story I know is a dialect story, and you 
couldn’t understand that.” 

“What is dialect?” she asked. 

“ Dialect is what takes the place of intellect,” he 
replied. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


7 1 


Harriet thought this was very interesting, but be- 
fore she could ask any more questions, the Queen, 
who had finished dealing the cards, called out in a 
loud voice: 

“ It’s time to begin,” and, ringing a little bell 
at her side, she played the ace of spades. “ It’s 
your turn,” she said to Harriet ; “ you must follow 
suit.” 

“ There are four suits, you know,” the Gentleman- 
in-Newspaper whispered — “ hearts, diamonds, clubs, 
and spades — and she leads trumps.” 

“ That makes five,” said Harriet, but the Gentle- 
man-in-Newspaper continued : 

“ Spades are trumps ; that is why she leads 
them.” 

“ But I haven’t any spades,” said Harriet. 

“ She has them all ; that is why they are trumps,” 
said the Gentleman-in-Newspaper. 

“ I don’t call that fair — ” Harriet was beginning, 
when the Queen cried out : 

“You’ve no right to communicate. You ought to 


72 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


know where every card is as soon as the first one is 
put down on the table. I do.” 

“ You looked at them all first/’ said Harriet, and 
she was very glad that the Queen took no notice of 
her boldness, beyond remarking : 

“ Dummies have no right to talk.” 

“ I’m not a dummy,” Harriet exclaimed, indig- 
nantly. 

“ Your other hand is,” the Queen retorted, “ which 
amounts to the same thing.” 

“ But, my dear,” the Gentleman-in-Newspaper in- 
terposed, “ if you deal, you can’t lead ; or if you lead, 
you can’t deal. You really have no right to make l 
and d change places like that.” 

“ Then I choose to lead,” the Queen said, sullenly ; 
“ and as the cards are all dealt, there’s no use in 
playing this hand out, because I happen to have 
nothing but trumps.” 

As she spoke, she put all the spades down upon 
the table. 

“ A most extraordinary hand,” she went on ; “ I 


i 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


73 



can’t imagine how it happened. And now you see 
how the game is played,” she said, turning to Harriet, 
“and it’s my deal next.” 


74 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ But, my dear,” said the Gentleman-in-Newspaper 
“ as you led, it was her deal this time, and as the 
dealer makes the trump, of course, you haven’t any, 
and so you lose every trick.” 

Harriet didn’t understand at all what this meant, 
but evidently the Queen did, for she gave a piercing 
shriek and began running around the table after the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper; and in an instant, all the 
letters were running around their tables, screaming 
and racing and tumbling over one another in the 
most surprising manner. 

Harriet waited as long as she dared to see what 
would happen to the Gentleman-in-Newspaper, who 
kept on running around and around, with the Queen 
after him. He ran so fast, indeed, that all his words 
in small print ran into each other, and only the scare 
lines were left to show how frightened he was. 

“ I don’t believe the Queen will ever catch him,” 
the little girl said to herself, and she felt so dizzy and 
bewildered — for all the letters kept running faster 
and faster, and shouting louder and louder — that she 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


75 


put her hands over her ears and hurried very quickly 
down the path opposite to which she had been sitting. 

She looked back after she had gone a little dis- 
tance and the uproar had subsided ; and the last 
she saw of the card-party, four 
of the periods were spreading 
the Gentleman-in-Newspaper like 
a tablecloth upon the little 
square table, while the Queen 
stood by giving directions to 
get his folds exactly in the mid- 
dle, as if she was going to have 
afternoon tea. 

“ So she must have caught 
him after all,” Harriet concluded, 
as she walked away. 

The path was straight and smooth, like the one 
she had come by — even the Royal Road to Learn- 
ing had been straight and smooth — and yet dhey 
did not seem to take her anywhere in particular; 
at least, they had not taken her to Alice, and, con- 



7 6 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


sidering that she herself had seen Alice at the 
bottom of the well, it was very strange that none 
of the letters seemed to know her, for she must 
have known them or she never could have read 
“ Jabberwocky.” 

“ But that was reading backwards,” thought Har- 
riet, “ and I dare say she is backward with her let- 
ters, too, which accounts for their not knowing her.” 

She had just reached this wise conclusion when, 
to her surprise, she saw the Green Frog sitting in 
the path in front of her, although she could not 
imagine how he came to be there. 

“ How are you getting on?” the Frog croaked, 
and Harriet noticed that he wore a bottle-green 
coat with tails like a tadpole’s. “ Have you found 
Alice yet ? ” 

“ No, sir,” she answered, rather disconsolately, 
“ I don’t seem to get on very well. Every one 
turns out to be somebody else, and no one cares 
a bit about what I want.” 

“Ah!” said the Frog, “letters are like people;, 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


77 


you’ve got to know them before they will take the 
trouble to know you. How do you like the Queen ? ” 

“ I don’t think I like her at all,” said Harriet. 
“ She cheated dreadfully at cards, and she tore the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper almost to pieces.” 

“ They always do that at the end of a game,” said 
the Frog, “ and as for him, he don’t mind it, bless you, 
he has a new suit of clothes every day in the year.” 

“ He must have a great many suits then,” said Har- 
riet. “ I wonder what he does with his old clothes.” 

“ He uses them for wrappers, of course,” said the 
Frog. “ Did you find Alice at the Red House? ” 

“ I haven’t been there yet,” said Harriet. 

“If you haven’t been there, you couldn’t find her 
there,” said the Frog. 

“ You see I lost the Royal Road to Learning,” 
Harriet explained. 

“ You couldn’t lose it if you tried,” said the Frog. 
“You’re on it now. This is the Royal Road to 
Learning. You’ve come too fast, that’s all, and 
the best thing you can do is to find the twins.” 


78 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“That is just what the Queen said,” Harriet 
answered. “ What good will they do ? ” 

But the Frog went on, as if she had not spoken. 

“ They will show you what you have missed, and 
perhaps they will help you a little in addition.” 

“ How do you mean, in addition ? ” she inquired. 

“ For example,” said the Frog, “ if you add an 
ache to a tooth, what do you have ? Answer : you 
have the dentist.” 

“ Do I ? ” said Harriet. 

“ If you don’t, you ought to,” the Frog replied. 
“ Some people have the dentist first, and the ache 
afterwards, but that’s a poor way to do things.” 

Harriet couldn’t help thinking what a large ache 
the Frog would have if he ever had the toothache, 
for he was almost all mouth. 

“ I do believe he could swallow himself,” she 
thought, when suddenly the Frog disappeared as 
quickly and completely as if he really had swallowed 
himself. 


CHAPTER VI 

THE DOUBLE-YOU TWINS 

“ He couldn’t have jumped over the hedge, even 
if he had been a leap-frog,” Harriet said to herself; 
for the letter-boxes grew to such a height where she 
was that she 
could not see over 
them, and even 
when she stood 
on tiptoe, she 
could only just 
catch a glimpse 
of the red roof of 
a cottage on the 
other side. 

“ That must be the Red House,” she 
thought, and she was still looking for the 
Frog, when she came upon two little boys who were 
peeking through two little holes in the hedge. 



79 


8o 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ I must have looked right over their heads,” she 
decided, “ and they must be the twins, for they look 
so much alike that I am sure I can’t tell which 
is which.” 

Indeed, it would have been rather remarkable if 
she could have told which was which; for both the 
little boys were dressed in white nankeen trousers 
with ankle ties, and little black jackets with large 
collars over their shoulders, and green cloth caps, 
with tassels, which they wore on the backs of their 
heads ; and besides, Harriet had never seen them 
before, and even then she only saw them behind, for 
their faces were pressed against the hedge. 

“ I wish you would let me look,” she said to the 
little boys, for there was no other hole to peek through 
and she had tried to look into a letter-box at home, to 
see where the letters go to, and knew there was very 
little to be seen in that way. 

“ I wish you would let me look,” she said again, 
and this time she took hold of the nearest little boy 
by his lunch, which he carried in his hand. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


The little boy paid no attention to this, beyond 
saying : 

“ Let go my lunch, U.” 

To which the other little boy replied, without look- 
ing around : 

“ It’s my lunch as much as it is yours, U.” 

They were silent a moment, after this, and then 
the other little boy said : 

“I’m going to eat it first, ’cause I took it to school.” 

“ If you do, you’ll have to bring it back again,” the 
other retorted. 

“ That’s just like U,” said the other, and at this 
they both turned around and stood looking at Har- 
riet with little beady eyes, stuck in their fat cheeks 
like raisins in a bread pudding. 

“ HAVE you COME to TAKE us TO school?” 
they asked, each speaking a word in turn. 

They looked so much alike that Harriet couldn’t 
help thinking they must be Tweedledum and Twee- 
dledee after all, and she looked closely to see which 
one had the rattle. 


82 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ Have YOU come TO take US to SCHOOL? ” 
they repeated, only this time they reversed the order 
of speaking. 

“ That depends upon who you are,” she said, guard- 
edly, whereupon the two little boys said together : 

“ I am U.” 

“ Oh, you are,” said Harriet, and she knew then that 
they must be the Double-you twins. But before she 
could say any more, the little boys cried in chorus : 

“O-U-R, our teacher!” 

“ Oh, I don’t know enough to be your teacher,” Har- 
riet explained ; “ I am going to take you to school.” 

The little boys made no answer to this, and then 
one of them said (and Harriet wished she could tell 
which) : 

“ Would you like to look through my hole, teacher?” 
and he pointed to the hedge. 

“ She’d rather look through mine, wouldn’t you, 
teacher ? ” said the other little boy, upon which the 
other said : 

“ I asked her first.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


8 3 


To which the other little boy replied: 

“ I thought of it first, so now.” 

Harriet was afraid they were going to quarrel 
about it, and so she settled the matter by saying : 

“ I’ll look through this hole, and the other little 
boy shall tell me what I am looking at.” 

And without waiting for an answer, she stooped 
down and looked through the hole that was nearest 
to her. But even while she was looking, she could 
hear the two little boys scuffling about the other hole ; 
for each claimed that it was his, which proved, as the 
Queen had said, that they couldn’t tell themselves 
apart, which must at times have been rather incon- 
venient. 

“ I can see the Red House,” Harriet exclaimed, 
“ and there’s a big A fastened on the front door, like 
a knocker, and there are a lot of letters hung out on 
a line to dry.” 

“ They are hung out there to drop,” said one of the 
little boys. “ Lots of letters begin with just dropping 
a line.” 


84 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“ And some of them have dropped already,” Har- 
riet continued. 

“ Then spell them,” said the other little boy. 

“ I can see G and O and A and T,” Harriet told 


him. 

“ G-O-A-T, goat,” spelled both little boys to- 



“ That’s not a clothesline nor a railroad line. 
You’ll have to spell again.” 

“ There are a C and a D, too,” Harriet added, and 
the little boys spelled once more : 

“ C-A-T, cat, and D-O-G, dog.” 

And, to her surprise, Harriet saw the letters run 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


85 


around and around until they really were a little cat 
and a little dog, chasing each other as fast as ever 
their legs would carry them. 

“ Oh, what fun ! ” she cried, clapping her hands. 
“ And now, whenever I come across C- A-T and 
D-O-G in print, I shall see them come running out 
of the printed paper just like these, and I suppose 
that must be what is meant by learning to read.” 

She would have liked to watch them play for a 
longer time, but one of the little boys pulled at her 
apron strings, saying : 

“ Do we go to school? Yes, we do go to school. 
We go to school now. Come, teacher, let us go to 
school.” 

And so, with a little boy on each side of her, Har- 
riet started for school. 

“ Why do you call me teacher ? ” she asked the 
little boy on her right. “ You know a great deal 
more than I do.” 

“ If we didn’t know more than the teacher, we 
couldn’t teach her,” said U on the right. 


86 




LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“ But how do you know you know more than she 
does ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ ’Cause she’s always asking us questions,” said 
U on the right, “ and we answer ’em. If she 
knew as much as we do, she wouldn’t ask us so 
many.” 

“ Perhaps that is the way she teaches you,” Har- 
riet suggested. 

“ Which is the reason she’s called teacher,” said 
U on the right. “ But we don’t mind, ’cause it’s 
easier to answer questions than it is to ask ’em.” 

“ Oh, I don’t think so,” said Harriet, for she 
had always found it easier to ask questions even 
when they weren’t answered. 

“ For example,” said U on the right, “we will 
do the tenth table in addition.” 

And the twins shut their eyes very tight, and 
repeated, in a sort of chant: 

“ Teacher says, ‘My little men, 

What do nine and one make?' 

And we say, ‘Ten.’ 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


8 7 


‘Very good,’ she says, and then, 

‘What do eight and two make?’ 

And we say, ‘Ten.’ 

And next she asks the answer when 
Seven and three make, 

And we say, ‘Ten.’ 

‘Correct,’ she says. ‘And now, again, 

What do six and four make ? ’ 

1 And we say, ‘Ten.’ 

She can’t say we have forgotten 
What five and five make, 

For we say, ‘ Ten.’ ” 

“ And so on back to one and nine again,” said 
U on the right, opening his eyes. 

“ I like the second table best, cause it’s easiest,” 
said U on the left, opening his eyes. 

“Teacher says, ‘Now tell me true, 

What do one and one make ? ’ 

And we say, ‘Two.’” 

“ And that’s all.” 

“ I should think the first would be easier than 
that,” said Harriet. 

“ The second is the first,” said U on the left. 

\ 


88 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“Then the third must be the second, and the 
fourth must be the third, and the tenth must ' be 
the ninth,” said Harriet, rather proudly, for she felt 
that this was quite a sum for her to do in her head. 

“ I’d like to see that done out on the whiteboard,” 
said U on the right, in a puzzled tone. 

“What is a whiteboard?” asked Harriet. “We 
use blackboards in the schoolroom at home.” 

“A whiteboard is a good deal better than that,” 
said U on the right. “It makes the schoolroom 
lighter, and the scholars brighter.” 

Harriet didn’t know what to say to this. It 
seemed so much like “ Whiting and Blacking,” and 
she had been told that that was “pure nonsense,” 
and very bright indeed. Presently U on the right 
continued : 

“ And sometimes we speak pieces.” 

“ Do you ? ” said Harriet. “ I used to learn 
poetry at home.” 

“Tell us some now,” said both the twins. 

“ I wish I could,” the little girl answered, “ but 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 89 

whenever I try, I say something else, the way Alice 
did. It’s in the air, I suppose.” 

“ If it’s got an air, you might sing it,” said U on 
the left. “You can remember a short one like ‘Try, 
try again,’ can’t you? ” 

And Harriet began, in a hopeless sort of voice : 

“If you were I, you’d never try 
To do the things I do. 

Because, you see, if you were me, 

Why, then I should be you. 

“If I were you, I’d never do 

The things that you might try. 

For if I should, why, then I would 
Be you, and you’d be I.” 

“ And I know that isn’t quite right,” she added, 
but she might have spared herself any anxiety, for 
the twins were not listening at all, and as soon as 
she had finished, U on the right turned to his 
brother and said : 

“ Now it’s our turn, and the name of the poem is 
* The Dairy Man and the Dairy Moon.’ ” 


9 ° 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


And they began to recite the following verses ; 
only whichever one Harriet was looking at, she 
always found that it was the other who was speak- 
ing. 


“THE DAIRY MAN AND THE DAIRY MOON. 

“The Dairy Moon was crying, 

For somehow she had slipped 
And splashed the Milky Way about 
The sky until it dripped. 

The little stars were burning dim ; 

’Twas natural, no doubt 
(They felt so wet and angry, too), 

To feel almost put out. 

‘Why should the Dairy Moon,’ they said, 

‘ Display such airs as these ? 

Suppose she is a Dairy Maid — 

She’s only made of cheese.’ 

“ The Dairy Man beheld their plight ; 

It moved his soul to tears. 

Said he, ‘ This is the saddest sight 
Mine eyes have seen for years. 

If they would set the Milky Way 
In the middle of the night, 

Thick cream would rise ere it was day; 

Both day and cream are light. 



THE DAIRY MAN AND THE DAIRY MOON 






LOOKING FOR ALICE 


9i 


“ * It’s very strange to me,’ said he, 
i It really seems absurd, 

That milk and whey, when set away, 
Should turn to cream and curd. 

And there are other things,’ said he, 

‘I cannot understand- — 

Why water always wet should be, 

And sand be always sand ; 

Why two and two, whem sums I do, 

Insist on making four — 

That is, unless they make one less, 

Or possibly one more.’ 

/ The Dairy Man to sob began, 

His heart was very sore. 

“The Dairy Moon gave ear to what 
The Dairy Man had said. 

Her foolish tears were soon forgot : 

She beamed on him instead, 

And with a moony, loony look 

She took the Dipper from its hook 
Above her trundle bed. 

With care she skimmed the milky sky ; 
The little stars, once more quite dry, 

Soon twinkled overhead. 

The Dipper then she set again, 

Like milk within a pan, 

And drawing near, once more gave ear 




92 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


Unto the Dairy Man, 

Whose tale of woe in accents low 
Went on as it began. 


“‘Fair Moon,’ quoth he, ‘pray tell me why, 
When all the world is bright, 

The Sun should always mount the sky. 

It surely is not right. 

It were far better should he try 
To brighten up the night. 

While on the other hand, fair Moon, 

You grope about the dark, 

When it were easier at noon 
To trim your feeble spark; 

And I should find it easier,’ 

So said the Dairy Man, 

‘To get up with the Sun,’ said he, 

‘If you would try my plan.’ 


“There was much more the Dairy Man 
Would probably have said, 

Had not the coughing of a cow 
Caused him to turn his head. 

He saw the Dairy Moon had set, 

And that the East was red ; 

And so, to get up with the Sun, 

He hastened back to bed.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


93 

“ What a nice, long poem ! ” said Harriet, as the 
twins made their bows at the end. 

“It would have been longer if the Dairy Man 
hadn’t gone to bed,” U on the right remarked. “ He 
didn’t sit on the edge of his bed, with one stocking 
off and one stocking on, he didn’t.” 

“And then he was so sorry for the little stars,” 
said Harriet, “ like the Walrus and the oysters.” 

“ Not he,” said U on the left. “ He was crying 
over the spilled milk, he was.” 

“ Don’t you like him ? ” Harriet asked. 

“ Not much,” he answered. “ He used to trip me 
up at the end of every line, until I learned him 
backwards.” 

Harriet wondered what difference learning him 
backwards would make. 

“ I suppose he had to get up the very first thing,” 
she said, “ and put his shoes and stockings on.” 

“ They don’t wear shoes and stockings, dairy men 
don’t,” U on the right interposed ; “ they wear pumps 
and hose, on account of the milk.” 




94 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ But you said he didn’t sit on the edge of his bed 
with one stocking off and one stocking on,” Harriet 
reminded him. 

“ He didn’t have any,” U on the right said, posi- 
tively, “ so he had to dawdle without.” 

“What did he do next? ” Harriet asked. 

“ I move we play bear,” said U on the left, sud- 
denly. “ I choose to be a bear.” 

“ And I choose to be a bear,” said his brother. 

“ And what can I be ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Oh, you can be a child,” they cried together. 

“ But I don’t know how to play,” said Har- 
riet. 

“ Oh, you don’t have to do anything,” said U on 
the right, “ you just stand still, and we growl and 
then we eat you up.” 

“ But I don’t want to play that,” said Harriet, as 
the twins began to growl ferociously. 

“That’s just like a girl,” said U on the left. 
“ We’re going to hug you first.” 

And Harriet was beginning to feel quite alarmed. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


95 

for the twins were trying to squeeze her between 
them, when, suddenly, U on the right cried : 

“ Look out ! Here’s the train ! ” 

And as they both let go, Harriet darted forwards 
and ran as fast as she could until she came to — 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE SUBTRACTION RAILROAD. 

Until she came to a small house standing by 
itself at the corner of a crossroad. The house was 
small and low, with a wooden platform in front of it, 
and a long, sloping, wooden roof, which came down 
over the platform like a big hat over a little boy’s 
eyes. 

There was a small pigeonhole of a window in the 
front of the house, with a shelf under it, and the word 

TICKETS. 

painted over it, and above that, and on both sides of 
the window, were pasted a great number of printed 
notices and time-tables. 

Inside the window stood the ticket-seller; at least, 
Harriet thought he must be a ticket-seller, for he 
wore a blue cap with a brass plate upon it, and a 
blue coat with a brass badge upon the front of it , 
and in his hand he held a large brass dinner-bell, 

96 



" DO YOU WANT TO BUY A TICKET?” 


































* 


■ 








. 















































































































LOOKING FOR ALICE 


97 

without any tongue, which he was ringing'as loud as 
he could, and all the time he kept shouting : 

“ All abo-o-o-ard ! All abo-o-o-ard ! ” 

Which seemed rather foolish, as there was no one 

\ 

in sight, but Harriet, and nothing for her to step on 
to except the platform. 

But this was evidently what he meant, for when 
Harriet called out to him : 

“ Oh ! please wait for me ! and stepped on to the 
platform, he stopped shouting, “ All aboard,” and, 
putting a pair of great, steel-bowed spectacles on his 
nose, he turned the dinner-bell upside down and 
looked into it. 

The ticket-seller’s nose was long and narrow, 
and from his chin there hung a pointed, silky 
beard. 

“Just as if he was a goat,” Harriet couldn’t help 
thinking. 

“ I am not a goat,” said the ticket-seller, in a gruff 
voice. “ Do you want to buy a ticket? ” 

“ Please, I don’t know, sir,” said Harriet. But she 


9 8 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


loved dearly to ride in a railroad train. “ And after 
all,” she said to herself, “ it don’t make very much 
difference where I go to, so long as I am on the 
Royal Road to Learning, and the Frog said I 
couldn’t lose that if I tried.” 

“You’ll have to hurry if you want to buy a 
ticket,” the Goat repeated. “You’re late, as it is.” 

“Where do you sell tickets to?” asked Harriet. 

“ I don’t sell tickets to,” said the Goat. “ I only 
sell tickets from. This is a subtraction railroad. 
Read the rules.” 

“ Oh, but you must,” said Harriet, fqr she thought 
that it must be a very poor rule if it didn’t work 
both ways. 

“ The first rule before you buy a ticket is to 
stop, look, and listen,” said the Goat. He leaned 
far out of the window and pointed to the notices 
above it. “ Have you read the rules ? ” 

“ No, sir,” said Harriet. 

“ Read the rules,” said the Goat. “ This railroad 
only sells tickets under the rules.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


99 


“ Is that the reason they are pasted over the 
window?” asked the little girl. 

“ It is,” said the Goat, “ that he who runs may 
read, and he who reads may run. Don’t say you 
haven’t time,” the Goat went on. “ Time is money, 
and you can’t buy a ticket without money. What 
do you want?” 

“ Please, sir, I want a ticket — ’’Harriet began. 

“ Where from ? ” the Goat repeated. 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” Harriet said, but 
the Goat continued in a sing-song tone. 

“ This is a subtraction railroad. It only takes 
you from where you are. Take a train from a . rail- 
road station, and what is left? ” 

“ I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Harriet. 

“ The answer to, ‘ Take a train from a railroad 
station, and what is left ? ’ is, ‘ The man who missed 
the train.’ ” 

“ I don’t understand exactly — ” Harriet began. 

“Just what the man said,” the Goat interrupted 
her, in a tone of triumph, as though this explained 
everything. 




IOO 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


But Harriet was so puzzled by this time that she 
could think of nothing better to do than return the 
conversation (of course, if you turn the conversation 
by changing the subject, you return it by changing 
back to the subject you have been talking about) by 
saying: 

“ Please, where do you sell tickets from ? ” 

For answer, the Goat leaned out of the win- 
dow again, and said, with a wave of his right 
hand : 

“ From Horners Corners where the House that 
Jack built is, in that direction,” and then, with a 
wave of his left hand, “ and from the House that 
Jack built at Horners Corners, in that direction.” 

“ Oh, but that isn’t possible ! ” Harriet exclaimed. 
“You can’t go in opposite directions to the same 
place.” 

“You can go in opposite directions from the same 
place,” said the Goat, “ and that is why you can’t 
take the wrong train on the subtraction railroad, 
which is a great advantage.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


IOI 


This seemed so clear that Harriet thought it was 
high time to return the conversation again. 

“ If you please, sir,” she said, “ I can’t buy a ticket, 
after all, because I haven’t any money.” 

“ Time is money,” said the Goat. “ If you haven’t 
money, give me time, give me time — give me a 
quarter of an hour. We haven’t a minute to lose.” 

“ Oh, I think I can give you all the time you 
want,” said Harriet, who felt very much relieved. 

' Thank you,” said the Goat. “ I 
will take twenty minutes, if you 
please. This is the only railroad 
in existence that runs on time. 

Here is your ticket.” 

Saying this, he handed through 
the window a small, round piece of pasteboard, like 
the face of a watch, with two hands upon it, point- 
ing to twenty minutes past twelve. 

"This is a return ticket,” he explained. "You 
gave me twenty minutes, and I hereby return you 
twenty minutes worth of time. Don’t tell me that 



102 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


you don’t want a return ticket. You must have 
come here from somewhere, and this will take you 
somewhere from here.” 

The Goat closed the window before Harriet could 
say anything, and then came out of a little door she 
had not noticed before and sat down on a settee 
beside her. 

“Now we are off,” he said, comfortably. “You 
see you were only just in time, after all.” 

“ Excuse me, sir,” said Harriet, after a pause 
during which the Goat blinked through his great 
spectacles, “ but can you tell me where I can take 
the train ? ” 

“You mean where the train will take you, I sup- 
pose/’ said the Goat. He took a newspaper from 
his pocket as he spoke. “ This is the train, child.” 

The Goat busied himself with his paper, and 
Harriet did not like to disturb him with any more 
questions. 

It was very strange, they did not seem to be mov- 
ing at all, and yet the trees and fences were flying 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


103 

by them very rapidly, and Harriet noticed that all 
the trees and fences and even the birds and animals 
had each a number fastened to it on a little ticket, 



like the prices in a toyshop. Presently a milepost 
passed them swiftly — so swiftly, indeed, that Harriet 
could not read its number. 

“ But there must be more than one milepost,” she 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


104 

thought, for she knew that it takes a great many 
miles to make a railroad, and so she watched for the 
next one, and was able to make out, as it hurried 
by, that it was : 

“9 MILES FROM HORNERS CORNERS.” 

And, a few minutes later, that the next one was : 

“8 MILES FROM HORNERS CORNERS.” 

“ I am glad I am getting nearer to J ack Hor- 
ner’s,” she thought. “ I wonder what he will be 
like.” 

“What a funny train this is!” she said, aloud. 
“ I thought it was a railroad station at first.” 

“ So it is, child,” said the Goat, without looking up 
from his paper. “ On this railroad the train is the 
station.” 

“ Is it ? ” said Harriet. “ It doesn’t seem to move.” 
“ So it don’t,” said the Goat, “ and that is why the 
train is called the station, because it is stationary.” 

“But I don’t see — ” Harriet went on, when the 
Goat interrupted her with : 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


io 5 

“If you don’t see, look about you. Now what do 
you see ? ” 

“ Why, I think the earth is moving,” she cried. 

“ So it is, child,” said the Goat again. “ The earth 
moves, and we stand still. It is a much better way 
than having the train move.” 

“ Why is it better ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Because when the trains stand still, they can’t 
run into each other,” the Goat answered. 

“ But I should think that somebody might run 
into them,” said Harriet. 

The Goat looked at his watch. 

“ Not in the next twenty minutes,” he replied. 
“ Sometimes when we meet a river or a mountain, 
it is rather difficult to hold on. Look out now, child, 
and see where we are.” 

Harriet did as she was asked. 

“ There’s a milepost that says it is five miles from 
Horners Corners,” she exclaimed. 

“ That’s right. We are just on time,” said the 
Goat. “ Five minutes for refreshments ! ” he called, 


io6 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


in a loud voice, and began to tear off pieces of his 
newspaper and put them into his mouth with an 
appearance of great relish. “ You’re not eating, child,” 
he said, kindly, offering her a piece of his paper. 

“ I don’t think that newspaper agrees with me 
very well, thank you,” said Harriet, politely, for she 
did not want to hurt the Goat’s feelings. 

“ You needn’t thank me that it doesn’t,” he said. 
“ What you eat is all a matter of habit. However, 
the ink on this is a little too fresh, even for my taste, 
though some of these bits of news are really deli- 
cious. There was a story now on that piece I 
offered you that was done to a turn. Read, mark, 
learn, and inwardly digest, you know.” 

“ Oh, I should have liked a story so much,” said 
Harriet. “ Couldn’t you repeat it ? ” 

“ I don’t think I could,” said the Goat. “ I don’t 
like to repeat what I’ve eaten. But I might tell 
it to you, if you like. I have it by heart by this 
time. It’s a subtraction story, though,” he added, 
doubtfully. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


107 

“ Oh, I am sure I should like it above all things,” 
the little girl assured him. “ Please do tell me.” 

“ Very well, then,” said the Goat. “ Once upon a 
time there was a little girl, and she — ” 

“ What was her name ? ” asked Harriet, who always 
liked to have that point settled at the very beginning. 

“ She was too small to have a name,” said the 
Goat. “ And you mustn’t interrupt me, because I 
can’t remember what I’ve eaten when I am inter- 
rupted. Once upon a time there was a little girl, 
and she kept growing smaller and smaller — ” 

“You mean bigger, don’t you?” said Harriet. 

“ No, I don’t,” said the Goat, rather shortly. “ She 
kept growing smaller and smaller.” 

“But my nurse says — ’’Harriet began. “I beg 
your pardon,” she added, hastily, for the Goat was 
looking very much offended. 

“ She kept growing smaller and smaller,” he re- 
peated, in a vexed tone, “ and smaller and smaller, 
until she became minus herself.” 

The Goat stopped. 


108 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“ Is that all ? ” asked Harriet. “ Isn’t there some 
more ? ” 

“ Less you mean, I suppose,” said the Goat. 
“ ‘ Minus ’ means less. That is the end.” 

“ I don’t think it’s a very long story,” said Harriet. 

“It isn’t a long story,” said the Goat. “ It’s a 
subtraction story, and the more you tell, the less 
there is to tell.” 

“ You might begin at the other end,” said Harriet, 
thinking of the Dairy Man and the Dairy Moon , 
“ and then it would be much longer.” 

“ Lots of people dip into the last end of a story 
first,” said the Goat. 

“ How do you mean dip?” asked Harriet. 

“ To see if it is dry,” said the Goat. “ And that 
is how they come to stop before they begin, and, 
speaking of stopping,” he went on, before Harriet 
could reply, “your time is up! Five miles makes a 
nice long lunch ! Mind you get off backwards, and 
remember it’s the earth that moves and we stand 
still ! All aboard ! ” 


I 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


109 


As the Goat said this, he waved his hands like a 
man on a freight train, and, with a little shock, 
Harriet found that she was standing on the ground 
once more, by the side of the road, down which the 
Goat was rapidly disappearing in a cloud of dust. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

ALL ABOUT ANIMALS. 


“ I do believe the train was moving after all,” said 
Harriet to herself, as she watched the Goat “ grow- 
ing smaller and smaller ” in the distance, like the 
little girl in the subtraction story. “ But then, if 
the train was moving, I ought to be somewhere 
else”; for Harriet was quite sure that she could 
not be in two places at once, and the place the train 
had brought her to looked strangely like the place 
she had left. 

There was the path by which the twins had come, 
and the crossroad by which the Goat had gone, and 
at the corner stood the signpost with the 
Royal Road to Learning 

on it. 

“ Although that doesn’t signify anything, because 
it might have been anywhere,” the little girl re- 

* 

fleeted, for she had come to feel that the Royal Road 


IIO 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 1 1 


to Learning was following her instead of she follow- 
ing it, which is a mistake that a great many little 
people make. 

“ Perhaps that was what Nurse meant when she 
said she came to herself on the entry floor, after she 
had fallen downstairs,” she thought. “ But I don’t 
see how I could come to myself unless I was twins, 
which is quite another question.” 

Indeed, it was a question which was very hard to 
answer, and so, after a few minutes, the little girl 
began again ; for she was very fond of talking 
to herself, although Nurse said it was a sign of 
a weak mind, and she often talked herself to sleep 
in her little crib at night, which, after all, is much 
better than talking other people to sleep, when you 
come to think of it. 

“ I woncler what it would feel like to be a half 
a pair of twins,” she went on. “ I don’t think I 
should like it, and I know I shouldn’t like to have 
only half a birthday. But then, Christmas is the 
best of all, and I only hang up half a pair of stock- 


I 12 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


ings for Santa Claus to fill,” and she was still 
thinking of this when she heard the sound of foot- 
steps coming “ ker-slop — ker-slop — ker-slop,” down 
the crossroad. 

As soon as he came in 
sight, Harriet saw that it 
was not the twins, for 
there was only one of 
him, and he was 
dressed in a large 
carpenter’s apron 
that covered him 
from head to foot, and his 
face was hidden by a step- 
ladder, which he balanced on his 
head, and in his hands he carried 
a piece of board and a tack-hammer. 

“ Who can he be ? ” she wondered, and it was not 
until he came to the signpost and set the ladder 
against it that she saw the carpenter was her 
old friend, the Green Frog. 



LOOKING FOR ALICE 


I 

1 1 3 


The Frog, however, paid no attention to Harriet, 
but proceeded to climb up the step-ladder, which was 
a difficult thing for him to do with the board 
in one hand and the tack-hammer in the other, 
especially as the step-ladder kept jumping up a little 
higher, when he had climbed high enough upon 
it, and dropping down a little lower, when he 
climbed down a little lower on it. Indeed, it acted 
just as if it was alive, and as nervous as a saw- 
horse. 

“Don’t you want me to hold the step-ladder?” 
Harriet asked, anxiously; for the Frog was quite 
unsteady because all his toes bent over backwards. 

“ It isn’t a step-ladder,” he panted, and his voice 
was hoarser than ever, for his mouth was full of tacks, 
which was quite enough to account for his having 
a sore throat. “ It’s a hop-step-and-jump ladder, and 
it’s handy if you’re not where you want to be, but 
it’s not so handy if you want to be where you are.” 

“ I should think a common step-ladder would 
be more convenient,” said Harriet. 


H4 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“You couldn’t use a step-ladder here if you wanted 
to,” said the Frog. “ This is the land of numbers, 
and everything goes backwards and forwards and 
skipping about.” 

As he said this, the step-ladder gave a tremendous 
leap, quite over the signpost, and vanished, leaving 
the Frog sitting on the top, and he began at once to 
nail the board he held over the signboard, as if 
nothing at all had happened. 

“In using a hammer,” he remarked, “ the first rule 
is to hit the nail on the head ; and a very good rule 
it is, unless you hit your thumb nail.” 

He finished his work, as he spoke, and Harriet 
saw that the sign now read: 

o Horners Corners. 

“ Oh, how lovely!” she cried, clapping her hands. 
“ Is this really Horners Corners ? ” 

“ It is,” said the Frog, wiping his face with his 
apron. “Why shouldn’t it be?” 

This was a difficult question to answer, and Har- 
riet was very glad when the Frog continued : 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


11 5 

“ It’s any place you choose it to be, if you only 
think so.” 

“ I might think it wasn’t Horners Corners,” Har- 
riet suggested. 

“You couldn’t,” said the Frog. “Seeing is 
believing, you know.” 

“ But I don’t see how I came here,” Harriet per- 
sisted. 

“ If you believe you are here, it’s just as good,” 
said the Frog. 

“ But how could I come here if the train didn’t 
move?” asked Harriet. 

“ Did you ride backwards ? ” the Frog inquired. 

“I — I don’t know,” said Harriet. 

“ If you don’t know what you do know, how 
can you expect me to know what you don’t know ? ” 
said the Frog. “ Pray be reasonable.” 

“ I got off the train backwards,” said Harriet. “ I 
know that because the Goat told me to.” 

“Then, of course, you rode backwards,” said the 
Frog. “You rode backwards just as far as the train 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 16 

went forwards, and so, when you stopped, you were 
just where you started.' * 

“ I don’t call that a very good kind of train,” said 
Harriet. 

“ It’s good enough as far as it goes,” said the 
Frog. “ It’s only a train of thought, and they 
always go in circles.” / 

“ How very singular ! ” Harriet exclaimed. 

“ They have to, because the earth is round,” said 
the Frog. “ And the proof of that is, that wherever 
you are, you always think you are in the middle 
of it.” 

“ But if I am, every one else must be, too,” said 
Harriet, to whom this was a new idea. 

“ Most people act as if they thought they were,” 
said the Frog. “ The earth is all middle, you know ; 
it wouldn’t be round if it wasn’t.” 

Harriet thought this over, while the Frog tossed 
the hammer and nails on to the ground and then 
took off the carpenter’s apron and hung it carefully 
on the signpost. At length the little girl said : 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


”7 


“ I don’t see what makes the earth round.” 

“ The earth is round because it turns around,” 
said the Frog. 

“But the Goat told me he thought — ” Harriet 
replied ; but the Frog interrupted 
her with 

“If that Goat 
didn’t do so much 
thinking, he’d be 
better off.” 

“ Ho w do you 
mean, better off?” 
she asked. 

“ I mean he’d be 
better off the train, 
and the train would be better off 
itself,” the Frog answered, and 
with that, he disappeared. 

Harriet knew that it was of no use to try to look 
for him, and it seemed foolish for her to stay where 
she was ; especially as the signpost soon stooped 



1 1 8 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

down, and, after putting the nails in its pocket, 
picked up the hammer between its thumb and fore- 
finger and walked away, without a word. 

Harriet was so astonished at this performance 
that she made no attempt to stop it. 

“ It isn’t very polite of it to walk off without 
telling me where I am,” she thought, and, indeed, it 
is more pleasant to lose yourself than it is to have 
the place where you are get up and walk away, with- 
out so much as by your leave. And with that, she 
ran down the crossroad after the signpost as fast as 
she could, and was just in time to see it turn a 
distant corner. 

“ I don’t see how it can go so fast on one wooden 
leg,” she thought, as she hurried after it; but when 
she reached the corner, the signpost had vanished, 
and, instead, she found herself face to face with 
quite a little company of animals. There was a 
dog, and a moo-cow, and a cat with two kittens, 
and an old rat with grey whiskers. 

They all looked at Harriet without saying any- 


/ 



QUITE A LITTLE COMPANY OF ANIMALS . 




thing, and she was about to walk away down the 
road, when the Dog (he was very fat, and his collar 
came up under his ears) said to the Rat : 

“ As you are the smallest, you had better be- 
gin,” whereupon the Rat said, in a high, squeaking 
voice : 

“ What’s your number, child ? ” 

Harriet didn’t know what the Rat meant by 
“ number,” but as they all continued to look at her 
very hard, she said : 

“ I haven’t any.” 

“ Lost it ? ” asked the Rat ; but before Harriet 
could answer, the Cow said, mildly: 

“ People have figures instead of numbers.” 

This evidently was a satisfactory answer, for 
presently the Dog inquired: 

“ How did you come here ? ” 

“ I’m afraid I can’t tell exactly, sir,” said Harriet. 

“Afraid to tell?” asked the Rat. 

“ Not at all,” said Harriet, emphatically, for she 
thought the Rat was much too sharp. “You see, 


120 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


sir,” she went on to the Dog, “ I was taking the 
twins to school.” 

“ I don’t see them,” said the Dog. 

“ That is because they have walked out of sight,” 
Harriet answered. 

“You had better explain that,” said the Cat. It 
was the first time she had spoken, and she added, in 
an undertone, to the kittens, “ Now listen, my dears, 
and you may learn something,” and she boxed their 
ears all around so they might hear better. 

“ I don’t quite understand it all myself,” Harriet 
began, timidly, for the animals were so very solemn. 
“You see, when I took the train, I didn’t know the 
earth was round.” 

“ There’s plenty of it round here,”/ said the 
Dog. 

“ She means round like an egg,” said the Rat. 

“ But an egg isn’t round,” said Harriet. 

“ Not for long, when I’m there,” said the Rat. 

“ Oh, I’ve read about that,” said Harriet. “ You 
lie down on your back and take the egg in your 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


I 21 


claws, so it won’t break, and then the other rats drag 
you away by the tail.” 

“ No such thing,” said the Rat, angrily. “ The only 
way to carry an egg without breaking is to eat it first.” 

At this point one of the kittens said : 

“ Ma, what is twins ? ” and had its ears boxed 
again, by way of answer. 

“ If she was twins, she would have four legs 
instead of two,” the Dog said to the Kitten. “ How 
would you like that ? ” he added, turning to Harriet. 
He was so fat, and his collar was so tight, that he 
“ had to turn all over when he turned his head,” as 
Harriet said afterwards. 

“ I think I should like it very much,” she an- 
swered, cautiously, for she did not want to offend 
the animals, as they all had four legs. “ I get ahead 
so slowly now, and if I had four legs, I suppose I 
should get on twice as fast.” 

“ Twice as fast, or twice as slow,” said the Rat. 
“A caterpillar has twelve legs, and he walks twelve 
times as slow.” 


122 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“Twelve times as slow as what?” Harriet in- 
quired, but the Rat made no answer, and the Dog 
said, gravely: 

“We turn in here.” 

As he spoke, he opened a wicket gate in the hedge 
at the side of the road. The animals all passed 
through the gate, and the Rat, who came last, shook 


hands with Harriet, 
and shut the gate 
tight, and then tak- 
ing a key out of his 
pocket, locked it, after 
which he grinned 
wickedly at Harriet. 



“Can’t I come in, 
too?” she asked 
through the slats. 


' “I’m afraid you will have to go around,” 

he said, over his shoulder, as he followed the others 
up the path. 

Harriet watched them as they passed around the 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


123 


■ r 

corner of a cozy-looking cottage, and she was still 
watching when the front door of the cottage opened 
and they all came out, one by one, and went around 
the corner of the house, and then came out of the 
front door once more, and kept on repeating the 
performance, like an army of soldiers in the theatre, 
until she grew tired of watching them. 

“ I wonder what they are doing that for,” she said 
to herself. “I don’t believe they know themselves.” 
And, to judge by the puzzled expression on the 
animals’ faces, they were quite as much at a loss as 
she was to account for their behavior. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 

There was nothing for Harriet to do but to go 
around to the other gate, as the Rat had said, and 

it was such a long way 
around that she was be- 
ginning to think she 
must have passed 
it, when she caught 
sight of another 
little wicket, set in 
the wall, like the 
first one, and find- 
ing that the latch 
yielded readily to her touch, she pushed the gate 
open and walked in. 

She was in a small, well-kept garden. The path 
led straight up to the front door of the cottage. 



124 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


I2 5 

but the door itself was closed, and the animals were 
nowhere to be seen. 

“ I suppose the Cow got tired of squeezing through 
the doorway,” the little girl thought, for the door 
was rather narrow, “ and, besides, she couldn’t very 
well go sideways, because there isn’t any sideways 
to a cow.” 

As, indeed, there isn’t, for the sideways of a cow 
is the longways, when you come to think of it. 

There was a mulberry tree growing at the side of 
the path, and beneath its branches stood a small 
table heaped up with plates and knives and forks 
in the greatest confusion.. 

There were so many knives and forks and plates 
that it looked as if some one was intending to 
have a dinner party with all the courses at once, 
which Harriet thought was a very good idea, because 
then you could eat all the cake and dessert when you 
were hungry, without being obliged to eat so much 
meat and bread and potato first, which you really 
didn’t care about at all. 


126 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


She was considering how strange it was that they 
had never thought of such a simple plan at home, 
when some one called to her : 

“ Now, then, what are you doing here? ” 

“It must be Jack Horner, ,, she thought, and she 
was on the point of explaining how she came to be 
in his garden, when she was quite shocked to hear 
herself answer (as if she was somebody else) : 

“ Please, sir, I am picking currants for the cake.” 

“ You’ve no right to take my apron without leave, 
then,” the voice went on. “ Eve been looking for it 
everywhere.” 

“ Please, sir,” Harriet heard herself reply, “ the 
apron has gone for a little walk down the road.” 

“Nonsense,” the voice said. “You know you 
have it on at this very moment. Bring me my 
hammer and nails directly.” 

And, much to Harriet’s astonishment, she did 
take the hammer and nails out of her pocket. 

“ Its most provoking,” the voice continued. “Just 
when I had a new birthday coming, too, to be told 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 27 

there are rats in the house. But Nl be even with 
them, as sure as my name is Jack Horner.” And 
with that, the cottage door flew open, and Jack 
Horner himself came out. He shut the door after 
him with a bang, and, 
putting his foot against 
it, he took the hammer 
and drove a number 
of nails right through 
the panel. 

“ There,” he said, 
with an air of triumph. 

“ The rats won’t get 
through that again in 
a hurry.” 

“ They might go in 
the back door,” said 
Harriet. 

“This is the back door,” said Jack Horner. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Harriet. “ I thought it 
was the front door.” 



1 28 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“So it is,” said Jack Horner. “This side of the 
door is the front door, and the other side is the 
back door.” 

“ But where do you go to when you go into the 
house?” asked Harriet, who was much mystified. 

“ When you go in the front door, you come out 
the back door ; and when you go in the back door, 
you come out the front door,” said Jack Horner. 
“You’ve no idea how much running about it saves.” 

“What a funny house!” Harriet exclaimed. 

“ It’s got a back and a front, the same as any other 
house,” said Jack Horner. “ If it had two backs, 
now, or two fronts and no back, it would be unusual.” 

“And you don’t need locks and keys and bolts 
and bars to keep people out,” Jack Horner added, 
proudly. “There was a Welshman named Taffy 
came to my house once to steal a piece of beef, and 
he couldn’t get in, either; because when he got in 
the back window, he got out the front window.” 

“ How could the rats get in, if he couldn’t? ” asked 
Harriet. 

/ 1 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 29 


“You may well ask that,” cried Jack Horner. 
“ So I said. But you don’t know them — cunning 
creatures.” 



He put his hands to his mouth, and his mouth 
close to Harriet’s ear, and whispered : 

“ They live in the wall.” 



130 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“ Can’t you catch them ? ” Harriet inquired. 

“They never come out,” said Jack Horner. “If 
they did, they wouldn’t be in the house.” 



“Then I don’t see what harm they can do,” said 
Harriet. 

“ I don’t choose to have them scrambling about 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


I 3 I 

over my head, like a new idea/’ said Jack Horner. 
“ And to-day — to-day ! ” he cried — and his voice 
rose to a shrill scream — l “ I found they had been 
walking through my house as if they owned it.” 

“ Oh, but those were the animals,” said Harriet, 
and she could hardly keep from laughing, because 
Jack Horner looked so queerly when he was in a 
passion. “ They came in the back gate.” 

“ Were they domestic animals ? ” he asked. 

“Why, yes,” said Harriet, who hadn’t thought of 
this before ; “ there was a dog, and a cat, and a 
cow — ” 

\ 

“Thep they have come!” Jack Horner shouted, 
excitedly. “You set the table, while I go and see 
the Pieman.” 

“How many shall I set the table for?” Harriet 
called after him. 

“ As many as you like,” he cried, as he ran around 
the corner of the house. 

This was not very definite, but, as there were so 
many dishes on the table, Harriet set to work as 


I 3 2 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


quickly as she could ; for she was sure Jack Horner 
would scold when he came back, if everything was 
not ready, and, besides, the table was so small that 
it really could not take very long. So she hurried 
as fast as she could, but the more she did, the more 
there seemed to be left to do ; and when, after laying 
a great many covers, she found there were still as 
many more to be laid, she measured the table with 
her eye and found that it reached from the mulberry 
tree almost to the gate, and was rapidly growing 
longer. 

“ Oh, dear!” she cried. “This will never do.” 
And she ran to lock the gate, when it opened from 
the outside and the Gardeness walked in. 

“ Mercy me ! ” the Gardeness said, as soon as 
she saw Harriet. “ Whatever are you doing, 
child ? ” 

“ I’m trying to set the table, ma’am,” said Har- 
riet; “but, somehow, it won’t set.” 

“ Of course it won’t,” said the Gardeness. “ For 
why? A table is like a hen, and you can’t make it 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 33 


set if it don’t want to. Were you setting it for 
breakfast, or dinner, or supper?” 

“ I don’t know,” said Harriet. 

“Mercy me, child!” said the Gardeness. “You 
must be very queer inside.” 

“ You see the Queen had afternoon tea first,” 
Harriet explained, “ and then the twins went to 
school — though it might have been an evening 
school,” she said, brightening a little ; “ but the Goat 
had luncheon after that.” 

“ The thing for you to do is to get ready for all 
three at once,” said the Gardeness. “For why? If 
you are late to breakfast, you’ll be in time for lunch, 
or a little early for dinner. Here, let me help you.” 

And the Gardeness took her rake and raked all 
the dishes from one end of the table to the other. 

Harriet put her hands over her ears and shut her 
eyes, expecting to hear a tremendous smash. But 
nothing happened; and when she opened her eyes 
again, there was the table all nicely set for two, and 
the Gardeness was seated in an arm-chair at the 


1 34 - 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


head of the table, while she fanned herself with a 
soup-plate. 

“This is a multiplication table, child,” she said. 
“For why? It’s a-multiplying by two, and so the 
more you keep a-setting, the more it keeps a-multi- 
plying.” 

“ But you didn’t have any trouble,” said Har- 
riet. 

“ For why? I used both hands at once,” said the 
Gardeness. “ Two hands, two plates, two places, 
you know, one for Jack Horner and one for me. 
It’s his birthday party, you know.” 

“Can’t I sit down, too?” asked Harriet. 

“ Mercy, no, child ! ” said the Gardeness. “ For 
why? You are going to wait on us, you know. 
Little girls have got to wait until they can multiply 
before they can sit down at a multiplication table. 
It’s a lucky thing for you, too,” the Gardeness 
continued. “Jack Horner is having all his birth- 
days come together now.” 

“How can he?” asked Harriet. “Mine only 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


*35 

comes once a year.” And Harriet had often wished 
that it came more often. 

“ That’s a poor, weak way to have birthdays,” said 
the Gardeness. “ He has his come when he wants 
them. For why? It makes the time go by faster.” 

“ But how can he ? ” Harriet asked again. 

“ Oh, he borrows them from bye-and-bye, Jack 
Horner does,” the Gardeness explained. “ Old birth- 
days aren’t good for much ; you don’t get near as 
many presents on old birthdays.” 

“ I should think, if he had had one birthday, that 
people wouldn’t expect him to have another one so 
soon,” said Harriet, who had had this carefully 
explained to her, “ and so they wouldn’t give him 
any presents, and I don’t think a birthday without 
presents would be very nice.” 

“ Oh, that is easy enough,” said the Gardeness. 
“ He always asks for the honor of your presents, and 
so you can’t help thinking of it.” 

“ What are you going to give him ? ” asked 
Harriet. 

\ 


i3 6 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


But, before the Gardeness had time to answer. 
Jack Horner came back, and Harriet was much 
amused when the Gardeness took a large sugar- 
bowl from the table and said, as she handed it to 
Jack Horner: 

“ I see you haven’t any sugar-bowl on the table, 
and so I am giving you this beautiful one for a 
birthday present.” 

To which Jack Horner replied: 

“ Thank you so much, not only for this beautiful 
sugar-bowl, but also for the kind thought which 
prompted such a lovely gift. Do you know,” he 
added, “ this is j ust like a sugar-bowl I used to 
have ? ” 

“ So it is — exactly like it,” said the Gardeness ; 
“ and that is why I thought you would like it.” 

Jack Horner put the sugar-bowl back upon the 
table, and while he was doing it, the Gardeness said, 
in a low tone, to Harriet : 

“ Now that is what I call presence of mind, which 
is a very rare gift indeed.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 37 


And, although Harriet was too polite to say so, 
she was glad to hear that “ presents of mind ” were 
so very rare. 

“ I hope you like malt-cake,” Jack Horner said to 
the Gardeness, as he seated himself. “ I happened 
to have a sack of malt in the house, and so I 
thought I would have my birthday cake made of 
malt.” 

“Who is making the cake?” asked Harriet, quite 
forgetting that sh^had no right to ask questions. 
But Jack Horner answered: 

“ Simple Simon and the Pieman, of course. It 
ought to be here now.” 

“ Shall I get it? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Mercy, no, child ! ” said the Gardeness. “ Don’t 
talk so much. Remember, when you are waiting, 
you wait.” 

“ But how can I, if there is nothing to wait for ? ” 
Harriet was beginning, but the Gardeness cut her 
short with : 

“You can wait until you are spoken to.” 


138 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

As she said this, a stupid-looking boy came around 
the mulberry bush. 

“ If you please, Master/’ he said with a grin, “ the 
Pieman says the rats have eaten the malt.” 

“ Dear me!” said Jack Horner, “ that is very 
annoying. Whatever shall we do ? ” 

“ If you please, Master,” the boy said again, “ the 
Pieman says he can catch the rat.” 

“ I wish he would,” said Jack Horner. “Tell him 
to cook the rat when he catches r ’him. The Chinese 
like rats, I hear,” he said to the Gardeness. “ It’s 
all in the idea. You’d better go and help the Pie- 
man catch the rat,” he added, turning to Simple 
Simon. “ And you go, too,” he said to Harriet, who 
made up her mind that she wouldn’t go unless she 
was forced to — you see, she didn’t like rats at all. 

Luckily for her, Jack Horner turned to the Gar- 
deness and said, as politely as if he were acting on 
the stage : 

“ Perhaps you would like to hear my new song 
while the rat is being cooked.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 39 


And, without waiting for an answer, he began : 

“There was a man, who tried to place 
His cart before his horse. 

It was his plan, he said, to race 
By backing him, of course. 





But when he backed his horse to win, 
He quickly changed his mind. 

The horse, of course, when he came in, 
Was just a head behind.” 


140 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


Before he had time to begin another verse, Simple 
Simon appeared around the corner of the mulberry 
bush again. 

“ If you please, Master/’ he said, “ the Pieman 
says the cat has caught the rat.” 

“Tell the Pieman to cook the cat,” said Jack 
Horner, angrily. “ I hope you like cat,” he said, 
anxiously, to the Gardeness. “ Its all in the idea, 
you know.” 

“ I like some kinds of cats,” said the Gardeness. 

“ I suppose if this one eat the rat that eat the 
malt, it must be a Maltese cat,” said Jack Horner. 
“ And now there will be time for me to sing another 
verse of my song.” 

“ There was a man who taught his school 
That speech came after thought. 

It was his plan by such a rule 
The scholars should be taught. 

But when he tried, by argument, 

This simple rule to teach, 

He proved the side he had not meant, 

That thought comes after speech.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


141 

“ Go away,” he cried, almost before he had finished 
the verse. “ How dare you come back here without 
my birthday cake ! ” 

Harriet turned quickly, and there was Simple 
Simon, grinning more foolishly than ever. 

“If you please, Master,” he began, “the Pieman 
says the dog has caught the cat.” 

“Tell him to cook the dog, then,” said Jack 
Horner. “ I hope you like dog,” he went on to the 
Gardeness. 

“ I don’t like dog biscuit,” she replied, in a non- 
corqmittal tone. 

“ I dare say the cake will be richer than that,” said 
Jack Horner. “Don’t stand there grinning,” he 
shouted to Simple Simon. “ Go and catch the dog, 
and don’t let him get a bite of anything else, or he’ll 
spoil my birthday cake. I’m afraid,” he continued, 
as Simple Simon departed on his errand, “ that the 
cake will taste rather gamey as it is.” 

“ I’m sure it will be all right this time,” Harriet 
ventured to remark. 


142 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ It’s little you know about it,” said Jack Horner, 
bitterly. “ But if Simple Simon or the Pieman 
come back here again without that cake, I’ll multi- 
ply the table at them, as sure as my name is Jack 
Horner.” 

This sounded very dreadful indeed, and Harriet 
was wondering what “ multiplying the table ” might 
mean, when Jack Horner sang the third verse of 
his song: 

“There was a man who had a gun 
Would shoot around the world. 

It was his plan to shoot for fun, 

Away the bullets whirled. 

The shot, alack ! came whirling back, 

And then the fun began. 

The man who shot the gun forgot 
The gun could shoot the man.” 

“ There ! ” he cried, “ that’s all ! and now for my 
oirthday cake ! ” 

I 

But it was only Simple Simon once more, who 
said, as he came around the mulberry bush : 

“ If you please, Master, the Pieman says — ” 


4 




OUT OF THE GATE AND OUT AND AWAY. 




LOOKING FOR ALICE 


H3 


“ Go away, or I’ll multiply the table at you/’ 
shrieked Jack Horner, but Simple Simon continued : 

“ If you please, Master, the Pieman says if you 
like malted — ” 

And that was as far as Simple Simon got, for the 
table began to multiply. It grew longer and longer, 
pushing Harriet and Simple Simon before it, down 
the path and out of the gate, and out and away until 
it ran like a long, narrow road behind them, and the 
House that Jack built looked like a little speck away 
in the distance. 


CHAPTER X 

CONCERNING GIANTS 

Harriet said afterwards that she was sorry she had 
not waited to see how the multiplication table mul- 
tiplied; but as she did not do so, of course she could 
not tell me, and so I can’t tell you. Indeed, the first 
thing after this, which the little girl remembered dis- 
tinctly, was finding herself alone in the midst of a 
forest. 

In every direction, as far as the eye could reach, , 
the great trees stood, like silent sentinels, and spread 
abroad their huge, protecting branches, which cast 
cool shadows on the leafy ground. 

There was a delicious odor of pine needles in the 
air, and overhead, on the limb of a fir tree, a dorkling 
(which is a sort of never-was bird) was sitting on its 
nest. 


144 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 145 

The Dorkling was preening its feathers with its 
long, sharp bill, and, as it did so, it talked to itself 
in an undertone, with its eyes shut. 

“ If you please,” Harriet began, timidly, after vainly 
endeavoring to attract its attention, for she thought 
that if the Dorkling could talk to itself it could talk 
to her also. 

The Dorkling took its bill out of its breast, and, 
opening its round, red eyes, said angrily: 

“You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone. Come 
now ! ” 

“ I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Harriet began again. 

“ Much good that does,” retorted the Dorkling, 
crossly. “ Say what you must, and go.” 

“ I should like to go above all things, ma’am,” 
Harriet answered, meekly enough. 

“ Do it, then,” said the Dorkling. “ Walk out, 
goose ! ” 

“ I only wish I could,” said Harriet. “ But there 
are so many trees in the forest, you know — ” 

“ That’s right 1 ” cried the Dorkling, shutting its 


146 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


eyes and rocking to and fro; “put all the blame on 
me!” 

“ I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure,” said 
Harriet, in a puzzled tone. 

“No more do I, if it comes to that,” returned the 
Dorkling. “Start fair, that’s all I ask.” 

“You see I thought you must know all about the 
forest, because you live here,” Harriet explained. 

“ Not I,” said the Dorkling. “ I live in my 
nest.” 

“ But your nest is here, isn’t it?” asked Harriet. 

“ Here to-day and there to-morrow,” said the Dork- 
ling, ruffling its plumage, which consisted of bits of 
straw and hair and dried leaves, all plastered together. 
“ It would take a smart boy to get into my nest, I 
can tell you.” 

“ I should think it would, indeed, ma’am,” Harriet 
assented ; for the Dorkling’s feet stuck through the 
bottom of the nest, which seemed to cover it up to 
its neck, like a skin. “ I don’t quite see how you get 
into it yourself.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


147 

“ I was born in it — that’s how,” the Dorkling 
replied. 

“ And then you grew up inside it, I suppose,” said 
Harriet. 

“ Not much,” said the Dorkling. “ I grew down, 
and that’s how my feet came through the bot- 
tom.” 

The Dorkling seemed quite pleased with itself, as 
it said this, and Harriet made bold to add: 

“ And how do you get out of it when you want 
to ? ” 

“ Now you talk sense,” said the Dorkling, encour- 
agingly. “ I don’t want to.” 

Harriet was about to ask, “ Why not ? ” when a low 
chuckle behind her caused her to turn quickly, and 
there was Simple Simon, grinning at her as foolishly 
as ever. 

“ Oh Simon ! ” she cried, “ where did you comq 
from ?” 

“ I dunno,” he said, “ I never got to the end of the 
multiplication table before.” 


148 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ Then how do you know this is the end ? ” she 
asked him, shrewdly. 

“ I dunno that either,” he answered, with another 
foolish chuckle. 

“ I dunno, and you dunno, 

And you dunno what I dunno, 

And I dunno what you dunno.” 

He seated himself on the root of a tree, as he said 
this, and took a piece of pie out of his pocket. 

“Have some,” he said to Harriet; “the Pieman 
made it.” 

“ What did he make it of ? ” she asked, cautiously. 

“ I dunno/’ said Simple Simon. “ Nobody ever 
knows what pie is made of.” 

“I should want to know,” said Harriet; for she 
had heard dreadful tales of naughty children who 
had taken what was not good for them without leave, 
and been very sick in consequence. 

“ Pooh ! ” said Simple Simon. “ I guess you must 
be a skinch.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


149 


And just to show that he was not afraid, he took 
a large bite. 

“ I’m not a skinch,” Harriet protested. 

“ Yes, you are,” said Simple Simon. “ When you 
eat one day andvskip the next, you’re a skinch.” And 
he went on eating. 

It made Harriet feel very hungry to watch him. 
“ And he ought not to take such big mouth- 
fuls,” she thought. “ I know he’ll make himself 
sick.” 

“What comes after multiplication, Simon?” she 
said aloud. 

Simple Simon did not answer at once, and then he 
mumbled something that sounded like “ Diversion,” 
and took another bite. 

“Diversion?” Harriet repeated. “What is 
diversion?” 

“ It isn’t diversion, it’s division,” said Simple 
Simon. “ Excuse me, Mistress,” he added, interrupt- 
ing himself, “ I think I hear a giant coming.” 

They both sat still and listened, and Simple Simon 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


150 

took the opportunity to finish his pie. At length, 
Harriet said : 

“ I don’t hear anything. What made you think 
it was a giant, Simon?” 

“ I dunno,” he answered with a yawn. “ I guess it 
was the pie. I always think of giants when I eat 
pie.” 

“ Do you ? ” said Harriet. “ How very extra- 
ordinary ! ” 

“ I dunno,” said Simple Simon, “ you’ve got to 
think of something.” 

“But are there really giants here?” Harriet in- 
quired, for Simple Simon was yawning once more; 
in fact, he didn’t seem to be very much afraid of 
meeting one. “ Do you think there are giants here, 
Simon ? ” she asked again. 

“ I dunno,” said Simple Simon, drowsily. He 
leaned back against the trunk of the tree and closed 
his eyes. 

“ But you said you thought — ” Harriet began. 

“It’s too late now — I don’t think,” said Simple 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


Simon, and, saying this, he pulled his cap over his 
eyes and went to sleep. 

Harriet couldn’t help feeling that this was rather 
inconsiderate of Simple Simon, to say the least. 
But he seemed so tired that she did not like to dis- 
turb him, and she was still debating what she should 
do, when the Dorkling — she had quite forgotten it 
was there — broke the silence with a harsh cackle. 

“Oh, hush, please!” Harriet entreated, but, never- 
theless, she was much relieved when Simple Simon 
himself spoke to her. 

“You needn’t be afraid of waking me, Mistress.” 

“ I thought you were asleep,” said Harriet. 

“ I am asleep,” he answered. 

“ Do you mean you are really sound asleep? ” she 
exclaimed. It seemed so ridiculous to be talking to 
some one who was not awake. 

“ Of course, he’s sound asleep, goose,” remarked 
the Dorkling. “ If he wasn’t, any sound would 
wake him.” 

“ He’s only asleep on the outside,” the Dorkling 


152 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

added. “ When he’s asleep on the outside, he’s awake 
on the inside ; and when he’s awake on the outside, he’s 
asleep on the inside. There are lots of people like 
that.” 

“ I never knew any one like that,” said Harriet. 

“ You don’t know much, and that’s a fact,” said 
the Dorkling, and it cackled again. It was very 
rude, Harriet thought, and she turned with some 
dignity to Simple Simon and said : 

“ Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me how 
you know you are awake on the inside.” 

“ Oh, I shouldn’t be dreaming all the time if I 
wasn’t,” he answered, readily. 

“What kind of dreams?” Harriet inquired. 

“That depends on what I’ve had to eat,” said 
Simple Simon. “ But most generally I dream about 
giants.” 

“ I wish you would dream about getting out of the 
forest,” Harriet suggested, but Simple Simon paid 
no heed to this. 

“ The giant I am dreaming about,” he began, “ was 



HARRIET AND THE DORKLING AND SIMPLE SIMON . 




LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 53 


a very great giant indeed. He was as tall as an idea, 
and his mouth was so large that his face grew inside 
it, and his teeth were so sharp that he used them to 
see with, and whenever he winked his eyes he used 
to scratch his face.” 

“ How could he see with his teeth ? ” Harriet 
asked. 

“ They were eye teeth,” said Simple Simon ; “ and 
the giant kept growing — and growing - — - and grow- 
ing — and growing — ” and Simple Simon’s voice 
gradually died away like an echo. 

“You said he kept growing,” Harriet reminded 
him, after a pause. 

“ He kept growing older and older,” Simple Simon 
proceeded, just as if he had not stopped at all. 
“You’ve no idea how old a giant can grow to be if 
you give him time enough.” 

“I thought you meant he kept growing bigger,” 
said Harriet. 

“It’s the same thing,,” said the Dorkling. “You 
can’t grow bigger without growing older.” 




i 5 4 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“ But you might grow older without growing 
bigger,” Harriet rejoined, but the Dorkling only 
said, obstinately: 

“ Try it yourself, and then you’ll know.” 

“ Besides that, you couldn’t grow any bigger after 
you were grown up,” Harriet insisted. 

“ Oh, yes, you could,” said Simple Simon. “ The 
same way a grandfather grows to be a great-grand- 
father, and a great-great-grandfather, and a great- 
great — ” 

“ And the farther off they get, the bigger they get, 
or you couldn’t see them at all,” the Dorkling inter- 
posed. “ Go on ! you’re wasting time ! ” 

“ He was big enough to be his own grandfather,” 
Simple Simon continued. “ His head was in the 
clouds, and he lived in a castle in the air, and he was 
so fat that he had to wear seven-league boots, so as 
to see where to put his feet when he went out 
walking.” 

“ How could they make such big boots,” asked 
Harriet. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


l 55 


“ First you catch your cow, and then you skin it,” 
said the Dorkling. “ It’s easy enough.” 

“ But the boots couldn’t grow,” Harriet ob- 
jected. 

“ Of course not, after the cow was skinned,” said 
the Dorkling. “ You don’t need to be told that, I 
hope.” 

And, before Harriet could reply, Simple Simon 
went on with his dream. 

“ One day the giant went out to look for a pair 
of new boots, and he met a boy named Jack, driving 
his mother’s cow to market, and he bought the cow 
for a hatful of beautiful beans, and Jack took the 
beans home to his mother, and his mother was so 
angry that — ” 

“ Oh, I know,” cried Harriet. “ She threw the 
beans out of the window.” 

“ No such thing,” said Simple Simon. 

“ She did in the fairy story,” Harriet asserted. 

“ This isn’t a fairy story. It’s a division story, 
that’s what it is,” said Simple Simon. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


156 


“ Oh, I see,” said Harriet, and Simple Simon 
resumed, in a sulky tone: 

“ She was so angry she made him eat the beans 
for supper; and that night, 
when he was asleep, they 
sprouted ; and they grew 
and grew until, in the 
morning, when he awoke, 
they reached away up 
into the clouds, and 
Jack began 
to climb up 
them — ” 

“ Where d i d 
you say they 



grew ! 


Harriet 


asked, suspi- 
ciously. 

“ They grew up inside,” said Simple Simon. 

“ Inside of what?” Harriet demanded. 

“Jack,” said Simple Simon. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


l 57 


“ I don’t believe it,” Harriet exclaimed. 

“And nobody asked you to. What’s more,” said 
the Dorkling, “ who is telling this story ? — that’s 
what I want to know.” 

“ But how could he climb up them if they were 
inside him ? ” Harriet inquired. 

“ It’s ever so much easier to climb up the inside 
than it is the outside,” said Simple Simon. “ There’s 
no danger of getting dizzy and falling off, for one 
thing ; and then, his head was at the top already, so 
only his legs’ half had to climb.” 

“ He must have been a very tall boy,” Harriet 
remarked. 

“So he was — very tall for his age,” said Simple 
Simon. “ And when he got to the top, he saw the 
giant’s castle away off in the distance, and so he 
went as fast as he could — ” 

“ How could he walk, if the beanstalks were inside 
him ? ” Harriet asked. 

“ He didn’t walk, he stalked,” said Simple .Simon. 
“ And when he got close to the castle, he found the 


i5§ 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


door open, and he peeped in, and there was the giant, 
sitting fast asleep in his great chair, waiting for his 
boots to grow old.” 

“Why — ” Harriet commenced. 

“ Because old boots are bigger 
than new boots, and they wear 
longer,” the 
Dorkling put 
in. 

“I should 
think new 
boots would 
wear longer,” 
said Harriet. 

“When new 
boots are worn 
they become 
old boots,” Simple Simon replied. “And so Jack 
took the boots, one under each arm, and ran away 
with them as fast as he could. But the boots were 
so new that they squeaked dreadfully, and at that, 



LOOKING FOR ALICE 


*59 


the giant woke up and jumped from his chair with a 
great shout, and ran after Jack as fast as he could, 
* with his voice screaming in the wind.’ ” 

“All this time Jack was climbing down the bean- 
stalk as fast as he could, and when he reached the 
ground, he looked up and saw the giant sliding 
down after him as fast as he could, and so Jack 
whipped out his knife, and with one stroke he cut 
the beanstalk in two, like a — like a — ” 

And at this exciting point in his dream Simple 
Simon dozed off into silence. 

“ Like a what? ” Harriet asked, impatiently. 

“ Like a bargain,” said Simple Simon. “And 
Jack got the best of the bargain, because he had 
the boots, and that’s a sure sign of a bargain.” 

“ I don’t see how Jack could cut the beanstalk in 
two, if it was inside him,” said Harriet, who was 
becoming very much confused. 

Simple Simon made no answer to this, and pres- 
ently the Dorkling said : 

“ He used his Jack-knife, stupid.” 


i6o 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“That’s not a bit like the Jack and the Beanstalk 
I know,” Harriet declared, in a discontented tone. 

“ The moral is the same. A dunce could tell you 
that much,” the Dorkling retorted. 

“ I didn’t hear any moral,” Harriet replied. “ And 
I don’t believe there is any, either.” 

But the Dorkling closed its eyes, and made no 
explanation, beyond remarking: 

“You have two ears and only one brain, so you 
can’t possibly believe more than half of what you 
hear.” 


\ 


\ 


CH APTE R XI 


THE HISTORICAL KNIGHT 

There was silence after this, and Harriet reflected 
on what she had heard. It certainly was a division 
story — the cow with four legs, and the boots with 
two legs, and the beans with no legs, and then the 
beanstalk being cut in two; and it seemed to her 
that she had learned a great deal about division, 
which, after all, was almost the same thing as walk- 
ing along the Royal Road to Learning, and, as the 
Green Frog had said, if she only kept on far enough, 
she must find Alice in the end. 

She had just reached this sensible conclusion 
when the sound of the tramping of a horse broke 
the stillness of the forest, and the Dorkling gave a 
shrill cry of alarm and flapped clumsily away, nest 
and all, into the bushes. The sound grew louder 
and louder, and the little girl sprang to her feet. 

161 


162 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ Simon ! Wake up ! ” she cried, and she shook 
him by the shoulder. 

But Simple Simon slept on, and she had barely 
time to step aside when a knight on horseback came 

crashing between 
the tree trunks. 

“Ahoy! A- 
hoy!” he shouted, 
and Harriet fully 
expected to see 
him tumble off 
his horse on to 
his head, for he 
had drawn his sword, 
which looked like an 
ivory paper-cutter, and 
was laying about him 
vigorously, without paying the slightest attention 
to where he was going. 

“ Oh, pray be careful, sir ! ” Harriet called to him ; 
for his horse, which was ink-black, with a flowing 



i 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


163 


mane and an uncommonly long tail, pranced and 
plunged until she dreaded every moment seeing 
Simple Simon trampled under foot. 

“ Ha ! ” the Knight exclaimed, as he caught sight 
of the sleeping Simon. “ A rescue ! A rescue! ” and 
he slashed at him with his sword. 

“ Oh, sir, please don’t ! ” cried Harriet. “ I’m afraid 
you will hit him.” 

“ I wish I could,” said the Knight, between his 
teeth ; for whenever he aimed a blow, his horse 
went up and down, like a rocking-horse, so that 
the Knight’s sword only whacked the leaves and 
branches round about. 

“ Have no fear,” he panted. “ If he move hand 
or foot, I will run him through and through.” 

“ I’m sure he won’t move, sir, because he is fast 
asleep,” Harriet said, quickly. 

“ Is he ? ” said the Knight, and he appeared much 
mortified. “ That’s just my luck! However, I will 
wait until he wakens.” 

“ He won’t wake up for ever and ever so long, sir,” 


1 64 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

Harriet assured him, earnestly. “ And you mustn’t 
hurt him, because he is a great friend of mine.” 

“ Maybe he wouldn’t be if I were to wake him,” 
the Knight suggested, hopefully. “ Consider how 
cross it will make him to be disturbed.” 

“Then why do you want to do it? ” Harriet asked, 
naturally enough. 

“ I can’t quarrel with myself all the time,” said the 
Knight, in an aggrieved tone. “ It’s very annoying 
to be as brave as I am, and not have any one to 
quarrel with.” 

“ But why do you want to quarrel ? ” Harriet 
persisted. 

“ Because I am making history,” the Knight said, 
grandly, “ and histories are always full of quarrels. 
First, I make it up, and then I write it down.” 

The Knight was clad in full armor. His helmet 
had two or three goose quills stuck in the top 
of it, as if it were an inkstand, while at his back 
was fastened a spear, like a penholder, tipped with 
a little gold pennon, and his shield, which might 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 165 

have been cut out of blotting-paper, bore this 
device : 

WRITE MAKES MITE 

“ What do you think of my motto ? ” he asked, 
proudly. “ It means * I work for glory,’ and that is a 
fine thing to do.” 

“ It must be very hard to live up to,” said Har- 
riet, politely. 

. “ Oh, dear, no ! ” the Knight answered, in a grati- 
fied tone. “ You don’t have to live very high to 
do that.” 

“Have you made much history yet, sir?” asked 
Harriet. 

“ Not yet,” said the Knight, and a look of disap- 
pointment crossed his face. “ I’ve written a great 
deal about what I am going to do. In fact, I am 
prepared for almost anything. But — it’s most vex- 
atious — things won’t happen.” 

“ They told me,” he went on, “ that I should find 
giants here, and robbers, and dragons. But it 
seems that some one has killed the Jabberwock 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 66 

already (it’s quite impossible to kill him twice, you 
know), and as for giants — ” 

“ Simple Simon was dreaming about a giant just 
before you came,” Harriet interrupted him. 



“ Was he ? ” said the Knight, eagerly. “ Do you 
know where he lives ?” 

“ He dreamed the giant was killed,” Harriet ex- 
plained. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 167 

“ That’s just my luck ! ” said the Knight, gloomily. 
“ If I had been here, I should have waked him 
and finished the dream myself, or else I should have 
made him dream that I killed the giant, and then 
I could have written it down. You don’t think 
he’ll have another dream like that, do you ? ” 

“ Oh, no,” said Harriet. “ But perhaps he did 
dream that you killed him — that is, if your name is 
Jack — I mean Sir John,” she added, hastily. 

“ I don’t know what my name is, I’m sure, ” the 
Knight said, pettishly. “ They are so hard to de- 
cide on, names are, and they told me it would be 
better for me to wait until I knew what I had 
done, so as to be certain that my name was suit- 
able. I couldn’t kill a giant very well if my name 
was Henry W. Jacobs.” 

Harriet didn’t exactly understand why he couldn’t, 
but the Knight spoke in such a decided tone and 
seemed so dejected about it that she hastened to 
turn his thoughts by saying: 

“ Perhaps you could tell me how to find my way 
out of this forest.” 


1 68 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ I’ll help you to find it,” said the Knight. “ I 
have been trying to get out of it myself for—' 
Harriet thought he was going to say, “ for weeks,” 
but he ended by saying, “ for ninety-three pages. ” 

'‘Then you have lost your way, too?” she in- 
quired. 

“ Not at all,” said the Knight. “ If I had lost 
it, of course I could find it again. The only trouble 
with my way is, it doesn’t seem to take me any- 
where in particular.” 

The Knight gathered up his reins, as he spoke, 
and Harriet walked beside him as he rode into the 
recesses of the forest. 

“ What do you think of my horse ? ” he asked. 

“ I think he is very beautiful,” she answered. 

“ Ah ! ” said the Knight. “ I hoped you would 
say that. When I got him, they told me that he was 
a hobby that had been ridden to death. But I knew 
better. I don’t believe there is a horse as fast as 
he is in the whole world.” 

\“I couldn’t keep up with him if he went very 



GOOD SIR HUGO AND FATHER ISAACS. 
























































































































LOOKING FOR ALICE 169 

fast,” said Harriet, in alarm ; for she did not want to 
be left alone in the forest. “ Please don’t let him 
run.” 

“ Oh, he won’t run,” said the Knight, looking very 
much surprised. “ And if he did, he wouldn’t run 
fast. In fact, I don’t believe he can run at all. 
But he can stand fast — he can stand as fast as 
glue, and that, after all, is the great thing.” 

The Knight paused, and then said, impressively: 
“ If you will look at his sides, you will see why I 
don’t care about his running.” 

“ I can see some scars,” said Harriet, after a close 
inspection of the horse’s flank that was nearest 
her. 

“ Scars, indeed ! ” the Knight made answer, scorn- 
fully. “ Those are marks to show where his wings 
will grow.” 

“ But I don’t see any wings, sir, ” Harriet ob- 
served. 

“ That is because they haven’t started yet,” he 
said, in great good humor. “ But when they do, I 

\ • 


170 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


shall be ready for them. I shall ride all day long, 
caroling my careless song, while the little wings 
grow strong.” 

And, with that, the Knight threw back his head 
and sang the following ballad in a high, quavery 
key. 

( “ But the tune wasn’t a very pretty one,” Har- 
riet explained afterwards, “ because the Knight said 
he hadn’t had time to write the music to it.”) 

“THE BALLAD OF SIR HUGO. 

‘‘Sir Hugo was a Norman, 

And his blood was very blue; 

Old Isaacs was a rich man 
And something of a Jew ; 

And so, of course, but little love 
Was lost between the two. 

“Sir Hugo was a-riding 

From a very hard day’s work; 

He’d burned a house and killed a serf 
And flogged a Holy Clerk ; 

But business duties of this sort 
Sir H. would never shirk. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


171 


“And ambling slowly towards him 
A-down the sunset light, 

A mule and Jewish shadow came 
Across his wearied sight. 

‘A Jew ! ’ he cried, and echo said 

‘Adieu,’ which means, ‘Good (K)night/ 


“But good Sir Hugo pricked a-main, 
And Father Isaacs caught, 

And chained him in his dungeon deep 
Until he could extort 
A ransom — or a largesse — or — 

Or something of the sort. 

“ So in the morning early, when 
The sun had scarce arisen, 

Sir Hugo to the dungeon went 
(What we now call a prison) 

To greet old Father Isaacs and 
To make his money his’n. 

“‘Thou dog,’ quoth he, ‘old Jew, I say, 
Thy money or thy life ; 

The one is thine, the other mine, 
Let’s change and end this strife.’ 
And playfully he bared his arm 
And drew his hunting knife. 


IJ2 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ ‘ Oh, good Sir Knight, spare me, I pray,’ 
Old Father Isaacs cried. 

‘ I gave thee all my substance, all, 

When last thy gates inside.’ 

He didn’t really give it all, 

But then, you know, he lied. 

“Sir Hugo listened to his prayers. 

But said, ‘ I must refuse, 

In simple justice to myself, 

To take less than my dues. 

My motto is, ‘Spot cash at sight, 
Especially with Jews.’ 

“ ‘ And to the point, without delay, 

I now do quickly come : 

Your teeth, the best I e’er have seen, 
Are worth a goodly sum. 

’Twill cost a thousand crowns apiece 
To keep them in your gum. 

“‘And if you take mine offer, 

I will you now release, 

And never more disturb your rest, 

But leave your soul in peace.’ 

And he thought of partial payments 
And an interesting lease. 


\ 






I 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 

“Then Isaacs looked full solemn, 

But really underneath 
He smiled a very Jewish smile 
And showed his inward teeth, 

And said, ‘ Oh, good Sir Hugo, 

I will be very brief.’ 


“‘Your terms are hard, you must admit. 

I know they are, but yet 
I will accept your offer since 
No better I can get. 

Here are the teeth.’ And from his mouth 
He took his double set ! ” 

The Knight stopped rather abruptly, and Harriet, 
who thought he was trying to remember how the 
next verse commenced, remarked : 

“ What did Sir Hugo say to that ? ” 

“ Nothing,” said the Knight, with a sigh. “ There 
was nothing for him to say. There’s no chance 
for an argument when one man has all the 
teeth.” 

“ I should think tongues would make more dif- 
ference than teeth,” said Harriet. 


1 74 - 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“ So they would,” said the Knight, “ if you had 
to hold them both.” 

“Oh, that wasn’t what I meant — ” Harriet was 
beginning, when the Knight reined in his horse 
suddenly, and said, in a frightened tone: 

“ We must go back at once.” 

Naturally Harriet looked ahead to see what was 
the matter, and, to her delight, she caught glimpses, 
through the leaves, of open fields and bright sun- 
light beyond. 

“ Look, look ! ” she cried. “ There is the edge of 
the forest ! We are almost out of it now ! ” 

To her surprise, the Knight only shook his head 
and muttered : 

“ Maybe you are, but I’m not.” 

“Why not? ’’asked Harriet. “I’m sure there is 
room enough out there for both of us.” 

“There may be for you,” the Knight repeated, 
“but I’ve got nineteen chapters more before I am 
out of the woods. That is the disadvantage of be* 
ing an historical character.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


l 75 


“ Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Harriet. 

“ You needn’t be,” said the Knight. “ If I got 
out of the woods here, I’d be sure to get into them 
again somewhere else.” 

“ It must be a very unpleasant sort of life,” said 
Harriet. 

“ Oh, it’s not so bad,” he replied. “ Little inci- 
dents, like you, are a great help to fill up with.” 

The Knight leaned down from his horse and 
offered her his mailed 

“ Good-bye,” said Harriet, reaching up to it, “ good- 
bye, I won’t forget you.” 

“ It wouldn’t make any difference if you did,” 
said the Knight. “ I shall meet you again in print, 
when I am published. I am going back now to 
Simple Simon, and I dare say I shall find one of 
his giants to fight with.” 

“ He only dreams about them, you know,” Har- 
riet reminded him, gently. 

“ I fight better that way than any other,” the 
Knight replied, brightly. “You’ve no idea what a 


176 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

lot of fighting I have done in my dreams before 
now.” 

And so saying, he put spurs to his horse and 
walked away into the forest. 


CHAPTER XII 


HARRIET FINDS ALICE 

“And now for Alice!” Harriet exclaimed, as she 
sprang from the shadows of the forest into the 
bright sunshine of the perfect day. 

Once more the air was heavy laden with the 
scent of many flowers, and the bees droned lazily 
about the rows of tall currant bushes between which 
the path lay, and the busy hum of insect voices 
arose above the strawberry beds, in which the ripe, 
red fruit peeped invitingly from beneath the crisp, 
green leaves, as though to say: 

“ Do come and pick us, we are so good to eat.” 

But Harriet had been told that strawberries al- 
ways belong to somebody else — which is a curious 
fact not mentioned in the nursery books — and so 
the brown hands clasped each other tightly, and the 
blue eyes were turned resolutely away, and she was 
very, very glad when the strawberry beds were 


177 


1 7 8 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


all safely passed and she came “ to a neat little 
house upon the door of which was a bright, brass 
plate with 4 W. Rarebit * engraved upon it.” 

44 Though I don’t think they have spelled his 
name right,” the little girl said to herself, as she 
reached up to take hold of the knocker. 

The knocker was very stiff in its joints, and when 
she gave it a vigorous pull, it broke in her fingers 
and immediately turned into a buttered roll, and, 
to add to her confusion, the doorknob also twisted 
off, when she touched it, and became a nice, round 
cake with china frosting on top, like the cakes one 
buys in a cake shop, and then she noticed that the 
door itself was panelled with sticks of chocolate. 

44 1 do believe the whole house is made of ginger- 
bread ! ” she declared, looking up. 44 1 wonder what 
they do when it rains.” 

44 Perhaps it is just as well that I can’t get in,” 
she thought. 44 The Rabbit was so angry with Alice 
when he came home and found her in the house. 
Why, he was almost as mad as the March Hare 



THE KNOCKER TURNED INTO A BUTTERED ROLE 







LOOKING FOR ALICE 


179 


himself — and without any reason, too. But then, the 
March Hare hadn’t any reason either, for that matter.” 

She was still thinking of this and trying to re- 
member whether all rabbits were mad, and if that 
was why they were 
called “ rabid,” when 
the door of the house 
opened and the Green 
Frog appeared ; that is, 

Harriet thought he 
must be the Green Frog, 
although he was dressed 
like a footman and 
“ kept staring stupidly 
up into the sky” with 
his great, dull eyes 
just as the Frog Foot- 
man in Alice’s Wonder- 
land had done, and it flashed across her mind that 
perhaps the Green Frog was the Frog Footman, 
and had been all the time. 



LOOKING FOR ALICE 


180 

“Only I didn’t know it,” she concluded, “which 
makes all the difference.” 

“ Did you knock?” the Frog asked, in his hoarse 
voice. 

Apparently he did not recognize Harriet, which 
was not surprising, as he did not look at her. 

“Did you knock?” he repeated. 

“Yes, sir,” said Harriet. “And I am afraid I 
have broken the knocker.” 

“ It’s of no consequence,” said the Frog. “ The 
knocker belongs to the Rarebit.” 

“ Do you think I could see him?” she inquired. 

“ You could if he was here,” the Frog returned, 
after some consideration. “ As he isn’t, you can’t.” 

“ I meant to ask, do you think he would see me?” 
Harriet corrected herself. 

“ He would if he was here,” the Frog said again. 
“ As he isn’t, he don’t.” 

“ There’s no sort of use in your waiting,” the 
Frog continued. “ In the first place, you can’t open 
the door without a doorknob.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


181 


“ But the door is open,” said Harriet. 

“ And, in the second place,” the Frog went on, 
without noticing Harriet’s remark, “ you couldn’t 
knock without a knocker.” 

The Frog spoke exactly as if he was the Frog 
Footman, and Harriet was so sure he must be, that 
she said, confidently: 

“ Then I should like to see the Duchess.” 

“ The Duchess doesn’t live here,” the Frog re- 
plied, “ but the Dutch Cheese does. Would you 
like to see it ? ” 

“ Oh, no, thank you,” Harriet answered. “ I 
must have come to the wrong house. You see 
the W. Rabbit I know spells his name differ- 
ently.” 

“ He’s been having a bad spell, as accounts for 
that,” said the Frog. “He went to the House that 
Jack built, to steal a piece of beef, but he couldn’t 
find it; and then Jack, he came here and found he 
was in bed, so he took the marrow bone and 
knocked him on the head — meaning him, you 


182 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


know,” the Frog added, by way of making things 
clearer. 

“ Jack Horner told me a Welshman came to steal 
his beef,” said Harriet. 

“ Exactly,” said the Frog. “ The Rarebit is a 
Welsh Rarebit, and that is why he tries to steal 
people’s dinners.” 

“ But W. doesn’t stand for Taffy,” Harriet ob- 
jected. 

“ That’s what they calls him when he tries to 
steal people’s dinners,” said the Frog. “ But he 
hadn’t ought to hit him on the head like that — 
spiles his temper and his language to hit him on 
the head like that, and he hadn’t ought to have 
done it.” 

The Frog shook his head so that his eyes rolled 
fearfully, and made ready to shut the door. 

“Oh, please, sir, have you seen Alice?” Harriet 
asked him, quickly. 

The Frog paused. 

“ Alice who ? ” he inquired. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


183 


“ Just a little girl like me,” said Harriet. 

“ Blue eyes and yellow hair and a white dress ? ” 
asked the Frog. 

“ Oh, yes, yes,” cried Harriet, clapping her hands. 

“ I haven’t seen her,” said the Frog. “ I knows 
my place and never looks at people as comes to the 
door.” 

“ You can’t learn nothing here, you know,” he 
concluded, as he shut himself in. “ It’s recess here, 
you know, and you can’t get nothing but lunch — 
but lunch — but lunch ! ” 

And his voice ended in a real frog’s croak, as he 
disappeared behind the closed door. 

It was too bad ! and Harriet was about to turn 
away in her disappointment, when she noticed that 
the Frog had left the door just a little crack open ! 

“ I don’t suppose he could shut it tight without a 
doorknob,” she thought, and she pushed the door 
back a little farther with her foot. 

As she did so, she heard a voice within singing 
these words : 


184 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


“To the Alphabet World it was Harriet said, 

* I want to find Alice. Oh, where has she fled ? 

I am sure that I saw her sweet face in the well ; 

Oh v where shall I find her ? Will some one please tell ? ’ ” 

To which the Frog (Harriet was sure it was his 
voice) made answer : 

“Then up spake the Frog, from his seat by the pool: 

* If you wish to find Alice, let this be your rule : 

Learn to spell very well every sign at each turning ; 

Only thus you may follow the Royal Road to Learning.’ ” 

After this, there came an interval of silence, and 
then the Queen herself took up the song : 

“ So Harriet walked through the Forest of Books, 

And she learned to know each by its cover and looks ; 

For there’s no way to know any book any better, 

Without having learned every alphabet letter.” 

The Queen ended the verse amidst quite a mur- 
mur of applause, which ceased, as the Goat began, 
gruffly : 

“To add it was easy, to add it was plain; 

Subtraction she found that the Goat could explain. 

At the corner, Jack Horner gave his explanation 
On the top of the table of multiplication.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 185 

This was followed by another verse, and Harriet 
could not guess who the singer was, except that 
she thought she had heard the voice before. 

“ Division she passed in the forest’s dim light, 

And presently met the Historical Knight, 

By whose aid, from the shade, she has come to the Home 

Of the Rarebit, and now she no longer may roam.” 

Upon which a great many voices took up the re- 
frain, and sang in chorus : 

“ Thrice hail to our Harriet ! Welcome, at last 

To the Halls of Delight, now her travels are past : 

Learning done, now for fun, in the halls of our Palace, 

Hand in hand, let her stand, with our own little Alice ! ” 

There was a shrill outburst of cheering as the 
song ended, and Harriet made bold to throw the 
door open wide and walk in. 

“ For they must be expecting me,” she thought. 
To her surprise, however, no one paid her the least 
attention, although all the letters and animals she 
had met on the Royal Road to Learning were there ; 
in fact, the house was quite crowded with them. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


1 86. 

But then, they were all engaged in dancing sol- 
emnly around and around to the strains of music, 
which the cow was playing on her crumpled horn, 
and the cat upon her kit ; and there were so many of 
them, all dancing at once, that they kept bumping 
into each other and waltzing on each others toes, so 
that Harriet could hardly keep from laughing, espe- 
cially when she spied the Gardeness, who was appar- 
ently trying to step on the rat’s tail as often as she 
could. Indeed, she managed to keep one foot on 
it most of the time, while she was stepping on 
it with the other ; so that the rat was constantly 
squeaking in time to the music, as if he was one of 
the orchestra himself. 

“ Mercy me, child ! ” said the Gardeness, as soon 
as she caught sight of Harriet. “ Whatever are you 
doing here ? Throw away that bread at once ! ” 

“ I want to eat it, please,” said Harriet. 

“Not here,” said the Gardeness. “They don’t eat 
bread at parties. Why aren’t you dancing, child ? ” 

“No one has asked me to,” Harriet answered. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


187 


“You needn’t wait for that, because no one will,” 
replied the Gardeness. “ It’s crowded enough as it is.” 

“ But it wouldn’t take any more room if I danced 
with some one,” Harriet remarked. 

“ Mercy me, child ! whatever are you thinking of ? ” 
the Gardeness exclaimed. “ It takes twice as much 
room for two to dance as it does for one.” 

“ I should think it would be more sensible — ” 
Harriet began, but the Gardeness gave a little shriek 
and cried: 

“You can’t be sensible at a party. If you were, 
you wouldn’t come at all.” 

“ Then why did you come ? ” asked Harriet. 

“ Oh, that is different,” said the Gardeness. “ I 
came because I was asked. Now if you weren’t 
invited, of course you wouldn’t come, and that would 
be sensible.” 

The Gardeness left off abruptly, and danced away 
as fast as she could ; and when Harriet turned 
around to see what the matter was, she found that 
the Queen and the Gentleman-in-Newspaper were 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


standing close behind her, and evidently had been 
listening to the whole conversation. 

“ It would be much more sensible of you to come 
when you were asked,” the Queen said, severely, to 
Harriet. “ It’s long after three o’clock.” 

“ But my dear,” put in the Gentleman-in-News- 
paper, before Harriet could speak, “ I opened our 
invitation (it was directed to us both, you know) 
and I recollect distinctly that it said six o’clock. In 
fact, I believe I wrote it down in my remember- 
random book.” 

And, much to Harriet’s amusement, he took a 
bulky notebook out of his pocket. It took quite a 
struggle to accomplish this, but finally he got it 
out, by tearing off his pocket with it, and, after 
turning over a great many leaves, he read : 

THE WELSH RAREBIT 
Requests 

The Pleasure of Your Company 
To Meet 
HARRIET 

At Six O’clock This Evening. 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 189 

“ So, you see, we were invited to come at six, my 
dear,” he observed, mildly. 

“Nonsense,” cried the Queen. “ Half of that invi- 
tation was meant for me, and half of two at six is 
one at three.” 

“ But it says this evening,” the Gentleman-in- 
Newspaper objected. 

“ It couldn’t be three o’clock in th.e evening if it 
tried,” the Queen retorted, in triumphant tones. “You 
can’t tell me what o’clock it is, and you’d better not 
try ! ” 

At this, the Gentleman-in-Newspaper looked at his 
remember-random book very hard indeed, and then 
he turned it around and looked at it upside down ; 
but he could make nothing of it, and, upon the 
Queen’s remarking that “ figures won’t lie, and you 
can’t make them,” he tried to put it back into 
the place where his pocket had been, without a 
word. 

“ What a queer invitation ! ” Harriet said to the 
Goat, who was standing beside her. He was dressed 


190 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


in a new suit of blue, and his brass buttons gave him 
quite a military air. 

“ What’s the matter with it?” the Goat asked, 
looking at her over his spectacles. “ Didn’t you 
get one ? ” 

“ I meant, Why do they ask two to come at six, 
when they mean one at three?” she explained. 

“ It saves paper and ink,” said the Goat. 

“ They might just as well ask three at nine, and be 
done with it,” said Harriet. 

“ Or four at twelve,” the Goat replied. “ And the 
principle of that is, The more you ask, the later they 
come.” 

“ Suppose they wanted to ask five,” Harriet sug- 
gested. 

“ They never ask five in one family,” said the Goat 

“ But five is only one more than four,” said Harriet 

“ It’s a great many more,” said the Goat, shortly, 
and, he added over his shoulder, as he turned on his 
heel and walked off, “ I don’t believe you were invited 
to this party at all.” 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


I 9 I 

A dead silence followed this remark, and every one 
stopped dancing and stared at Harriet, who began to 
feel rather uncomfortable. 

“ I couldn’t be asked to meet myself very well,” 
the little girl said, addressing no one in particular, 
when she felt that she could stand the situation no 
longer. 

“ It’s a pity you can’t see yourself as others see 
you,” the Queen rejoined, in withering tones, as if 
that had anything to do with the case. 

“ You could, if you had a pair of looking-glass eyes, 
you know,” the Gentleman-in-Newspaper observed. 
“ I swallowed a piece of looking-glass once, I recollect, 
just to see what I looked like inside. Ypu’ve no 
idea how badly it made me feel.” 

“ I really have a right to be here, because the party 
was given for me,” Harriet went on, desperately. 

“ Given ! ” the Queen retorted, with a mocking 
laugh. “You’ve taken it, you mean, and without 
being asked, too ! ” 

At this, there was a great uproar, and all the 


192 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


letters joined hands together and danced around 
her in a circle. 

“ She learned our alphabet,” they cried, confusedly. 

“ And examples in addition,” the Double-you twins 
exclaimed. 

“ And she rode on my railroad,” said the Goat. 

“ And she did sums on my table,” shrieked Jack 
Horner. 

“ And I taught her division,” shouted Simple 
Simon, as if Harriet, and not he, was to blame for 
that. 

When they were all silent once more, the Queen 
spoke again. 

“You see what you have done, child,” she said, 
solemnly. “You have come here and taken the best 
from all of us, and have given nothing in return.” 

“ And now you have come to the end,” the Queen 
went on. “You can’t go forwards, because you have 
gone as far as a little girl of your age can go ; and 
you can’t go back, because you are a little girl, and 
so you can’t unlearn what you have learned, not if 


/ 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


*93 


you live to be a hundred years old. The question 
is, Why did you come here, and why have you done 
all this? ” 

The Queen drew herself up to her full height, as 
she waited for Harriet’s reply, and every one took a 
step nearer and repeated : 

“ Why did you come here ? Why did you do it ? ” 

“ Oh, if you please,” said Harriet, in much distress, 
“ I only came to find Alice.” 

“ Oho ! She has only come to find Alice ! ” The 
Queen echoed her words, and a smile gradually 
spread over her features. “Why, she is only one 
more little girl looking for Alice, after all, and that 
is the best excuse in the world. Give me your arm, 
my dear, and you shall go to her ! ” 

So with the Queen on her right, and the Gentle- 
man-in-Newspaper on her left, and with the whole 
merry company following, Harriet was led, with 
much laughter and whispering, towards a small 
green and gold door. 

“ Is Alice in there ? ” Harriet exclaimed, drawing 


i 9 4 LOOKING FOR ALICE 

back a little. “ Oh, you must be mistaken ! Why, 
that looks just like the cover of my ‘Alice in Won- 
derland ’ book at home ! ” 

“ Foolish child,” said the Queen, grandly, “ of 

course she is in 
there. Don’t you 
p know that that is 
the only place where 
£7 Alice can be? If 
\ u she were out here 
with us letters, she 
would grow old and 
wrinkled, as all mortals 
must and do. But in 
there she is always 
young and fresh and 
bright ; the same little Alice whom your mother and 
father knew when they were little children of your 
own age, when they also started on the journey 
along the Royal Road to Learning to find Alice and 
her Wonderland for themselves ! ” 



r 




LOOKING FOR ALICE 


*95 


With these words, the Queen stood aside, and 
Harriet left all the letters and figures and animals, 
and opened the little green and gold door to find 
Alice for herself. 

It may have been that Harriet only dreamed of 
all the sayings and doings set forth in this ver- 
acious narrative — for oftentimes, when she was 
leaving her little crib to steal away, barefooted, into 
dreamland, she thought that she heard again the 
harsh voice of the Dorkling, scolding from its nest, 
or the hollow clatter of the Knight’s armor as he 
bumped against the dusky trees, or the shrill screams 
of the Queen, rising above the endless flow of the 
Gentleman-in-Newspaper’s recollections — and the 
hurried explanations of the Gardeness. 

But one thing is certain, from that time forth 
whenever Harriet was tired of play and wanted to 
hear about Alice and her Adventures, she would take 
the little green and gold book and curl herself up in 
the corner of the school-room window, and hand in 


196 


LOOKING FOR ALICE 


hand the little girls would wander amongst the cool 
fountains of wisdom and the bright flower-beds of 
the imagination which make Alices Wonderland so 
good a place for every human child to dwell in for 
at least a little time. 




































































































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